Many thanks to Wales Haiku Journal for accepting two of my submissions for their Autumn edition! Both of these submissions chronicle my experiences with Long Covid.
a day's work
in her apron pocket
scraps of jotted poems
This first one is a haiku written about Emily Dickinson. While being homebound for eleven months, I got to thinking about both Emily Dickinson and Julian of Norwich, two women who both chose lives of solitude. I didn't choose the solitude that I was living, but as an introvert I also didn't hate it because I have always valued quiet and time alone. Without being too presumptuous, I thought of both Emily and Julian as possible guides for me as I navigated this experience.
I especially thought a lot about Emily's bedroom. We visited the Emily Dickinson museum in Amherst several years ago and I fell in love with her bedroom. This article has a good picture of it: https://share.google/vUb3NPvio6U79uGD3
When I was young and heard that Emily Dickinson was a recluse, I thought of her as a dark, shadowy figure living up a narrow staircase in a dark, shadowy room. But nothing could be further from the truth. What struck me most about her bedroom was how light and airy it is with the four big windows. Two of the windows look out on the street, which was the main thoroughfare at the time. Emily could look out the window and see all of Amherst pass by. The other two windows look towards her brother's house, Evergreen, where he lived with his wife and children. There is a path behind the houses that connect them and Emily used this path to go visiting. Her bedroom, with its big windows, pretty wallpaper, comfortable furnishings, small desk, and warm stove has become one of the happy places I go to in my mind when I'm feeling anxious or blue.
While I was experiencing the extreme fatigue of Long Covid and spending a lot of time in my own bedroom (which is also a comfortable and light filled space), I read a historical novel written for teens about Emily's childhood through young adulthood years called A Voice of Her Own: Becoming Emily Dickinson by Barbara Dana. It was very well researched and really did a good job of capturing Emily's young spirit. I got a lot of insight into her life, (including some insight into why she later became a recluse, but I'm not prepared to talk about that yet without further inquiry).
One such insight has to do with the rhythm of her days and her process of writing poetry. Again, I had the mistaken view of her sitting alone in her room, at her desk writing her poems. But actually, her days were spent doing household chores, tending the garden, and baking bread. She was the family bread baker. As she went about her daily round, she wrote lines of poetry on scraps of paper and put them in her pocket. Just like me! I'm always finding my little scraps stuck in a book or in an old purse or tucked in a drawer. When I first started writing haiku, I wrote them down in little notebooks where I could keep track of them. I've grown sloppy over the years, and I keep thinking that I should be more intentional about keeping track of my poems so they don't get lost. But then again, maybe this is a form of catch and release. “If you love something, set it free” and all that. And it is fun to find these scraps. I say it's my past self leaving little bits of inspiration and beauty for my future self.
So that's what this haiku is about. It's about how poetry is a process as much as it is a finished product and it's also about how whatever else a poet might be doing, their real work is capturing words before they float away.
This haiga also grew out of my experience of solitude during Long Covid. My third flair up began in June of 2023. I just woke up one morning with vertigo and the sinking feeling of bone weary fatigue. I had overcome this fatigue twice before, so I was crushed when it returned. Out of love, empathy, and compassion, Kevin gave me this statue of the resting Buddha as a way of acknowledging the power and necessity of rest.
He also often brought me flowers to brighten up my days, including this bouquet from KOA’s annual Sunflower Festival. I wanted to capture the sunflowers while they were fresh, so one day I created this still life and took photos of it. I chose the objects for this composition with great care. The vase belonged to my mother, the apples are from our orchard, the stone was a gift from my son Daniel when he returned from China—the land of Qigong, and the notebook contains some of my earliest haiku.
I had to rest a lot during the process of choosing these items, composing, and photographing this scene. It took me a whole afternoon. If I hadn't had Long Covid, I'm not sure I would have even taken the time to do this. Or I would have done it quickly, squeezing it into all the other things I would have been doing that day. I do know that being forced to slow down and move at a snail's pace allowed this haiku to bubble up. This realization that in the stillness and in the act of composing, I too was being composed.
I would not wish the experience of Long Covid on anyone, but at the same time, I am grateful for the lessons it has taught me. I have had to learn a new way of being in the world. The transformation is not yet complete. I'm still not fully “recovered,” but I'm much better than I was. I don't know if I will ever be like I was before, but then again, I'm not sure that I want to be.
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