Distancing – Week Five
The Neighbor

I have never been in my neighbor’s back garden. I find the gate in the alley

barricaded by recycle bins. A grape-clustered clematis blooms on the fence.

She steps back, allows me to enter after she has moved everything. I take a

chair in the grass. She takes the chair on the patio. I’ve brought my own tea.

A single Cecile Brunner blooms. A variegated osier muscles its way out of a

bed. Compliments are given, complaints are made. Two women on a spring

morning sitting six feet apart hold their worlds together.

A leaf blower blasts
obscenities – we lean closer
to hear ourselves

Distancing – Week Five
Sauvie Island Beach

I need a pedicure so we drive to the nearest beach. The air is so clear that

Mt. Hood, Mt. Adams, Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Rainier play peek-a-boo around

each bend. Crowds of cars cluster at the entrances to the nude beach. We

drive to the end of the road. Shoes go in my bag as soon as we hit the

shoreline. Course sand and half-shell sweet-water clams scour my soles.

Whole clams, like opaque cats-eye marbles barely below the surface, entice

gulls and fingers. Fine silty mud hangs heavy on feet. Black ooze is washed

away by the current. Tender feet are cradled by the sun-warmed sand.

When I slip between fresh cotton sheets, my feet have never been so soft.

plainchant of ospreys
carried by wind over water
calm settles between us

Distancing – Week Six
Baskett Slough

A century of Canada geese skirl over the marsh. They land and pebble the

hillside below the butte. We think we are off piste as we tiptoe through

thistles. A rig lumbers past, stretches its arms to embrace and spray the

fields.  The geese have shifted. Murmurations rise and fall joined by a

phalanx of snow geese. We eat our egg salad sandwiches sitting on the open

back-hatch. Curious paper wasps drift by then congregate near the car. One

lingers in the passenger door jamb. H. is already behind the wheel. I yell,

“Go. Go.” The car gains speed. I chase after it, jump in as the wasp blows

away. I slam the door and the car peals around the corner onto the gravel

access road.

only one mud patch
tractor crushed grass in a seep
no place to step but in

– Kerstin Schulz

Author’s Note: These “Distancing” poems are from a collection of Haibuns written during the first weeks of the pandemic shut down. They chronicle my travels, usually with my husband (H.), within a prescribed radius around Portland.