Time, for me, has felt completely unspooled. It’s been like history doesn’t exist and I’m just like, swirling in an amorphous ether. – Ben Gillespie
Staying
home in Covid
pandemic isolates
me from others, outside and time.
Distanced.
I see
the world on screens
through windows, in our car.
Inside I search past and future.
Distanced.
I know
the date and time
from computer, TV.
I do not have a watch or cell.
Distanced.
Wound-up,
stressed for us all,
I unspool lines that break.
For this uncertain speck of time, I’m
Distanced.
Linda Varsell Smith is a poet, teacher and novelist who lives with her husband Court in Corvallis. She retired from LBCC after teaching creative writing, children’s literature, and literary publication, which produced The Eloquent Umbrella: A Journal for the Arts. She was an editor for Calyx Books for over 30 years. She is president of PEN Women Portland and past-president of the Oregon Poetry Association. She belongs to several writers and Scrabble groups?