By Miriam Ben-Yoseph
Books and Coffee
Morning Pages
Out with Harley
And then breakfast
Water plants
And flowers
More writing
And then a shower
French with Sarah
English with Nyanjala
Emails
Texts
And zooms
Before I realize
It is already noon
Read
Return Calls
Respond to emails
Phone
Family and friends
Before it is too late
For them
In Israel and in Romania
and not too early in California
In the late afternoon
Time for another walk
With Harley
And one more meeting
Via zoom.
A glass of wine
Before dinner
Prepared by us
Sometimes
Delivered
Time remains
For conversation
And then reading
Books and magazines
I fall asleep
In the middle of a sentence
I dream
That the virus
Disappeared
And that life will be
As it has always been
Is this good news
Or a mere warning
I ask myself
When I awake
In the Morning
Originally from Romania, Miriam Ben-Yoseph teaches and writes about place and identity. She lives in Evanston, Illinois with her husband Yoav and their dog Harley.
The pandemic changed almost every aspect of our lives including writing–why we write, when we write, where we write, how we write and what we write. For me the biggest change has been in what I write. Gradually, most of my short stories and journal entries have become poems. This change happened naturally, facilitated by solitude, the strengthening of connections between the mind and the heart, and the yearning for healing that only poetry can provide.
