Joy in the Time of Corona Virus

"Aimless Love" (Excerpt)   by Billy Collins

This morning as I walked along the lakeshore

I fell in love with a wren   . . . . 

. . .  I found myself standing at the bathroom sink

gazing down affectionately at the soap,

so patient, so soluble,

so at home in its pale green soap dish.

I could feel myself falling again

as I felt its turning in my wet hands

and caught the scent of lavender and stone.

"Aimless Love"  is the title poem of a Billy Collins anthology published in 2014. It reminds me of why he is the favorite of so many readers.  He turns ordinary moments into celebrations, the mundane into the magical.
How much we need now that magic as we careen around the same four walls for weeks on end!  How much we need the magic of the soap "so patient, so soluble."  Will we ever view soap "affectionately" again?  What about disinfecting wipes and protective masks? Can we celebrate them now?  Will we remember them nostalgically?
Collins makes me think I'm missing a lot as I blunder through isolation. "Poetry fills me with joy," he says, "and I rise like a feather in the wind." ("The Trouble with Poetry").
There is joy in the woman herding her two copper-colored retrievers twice a day up and down my street. Joy in the startled deer rushing through the back yard toward the street, and suddenly turning around to slink back into the woods. Joy in sighting our back yard patio from across the ravine separating us from the backside street--seeing our backyard as the neighbors see it.
Joy in the robin staring us down from a perch atop our wind chimes, in the inquiring approach of the cowbird looking up at the sliding patio door, in the Cooper's hawk dive bombing our feeder, but coming up empty.
Joy in the bird chorus striking up, many hours before before sun-setting, as I am rounding the high school track. Joy in the magnolia blossoms flitting in the breeze past my window like a late spring snow flurry. Joy in the surprise delivery from FedEx, a pair of women's sandals in a box inside another box. 

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Heinrich C. Eberwein, 1805-1888[/caption]

Joy in discovering the secluded cemetery plot of the Eberwein family. Despite the invasion of  late twentieth century housing, the smudged nineteenth century engravings, the decapitated memorials (right), it retains its sacred privacy, its sheltering-in-place in our neighborhood.

Joy in re-reading C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy, which I first discovered in high school.  Yesterday I discovered his poetry for the first time after rediscovering his fantasy fiction. His best-known Screwtape Letters satire was written in wartime, making it curiously relevant in a pandemic.

Joy of isolation in the time of social media. Victoria Facetimes with her distant grandchildren. Our writer's group members share their work on Zoom twice a month.  We will celebrate Holy Communion next week on YouTube. Not quite the same as face-to-face, but it is joy.
Joy in the Governor's melodramatic speech ordering shelter-in-place in Missouri for twenty days. Ours is the 41st state to declare a shelter-in-place mandate.  Our governor has a feeble sense of anti-climax.
Joy in pondering what is meant by "essential services," exempt from the "stay-in-place" mandate. The blue and red utility paint in our front and back yards are the harbingers of the drainage engineers, contracted to drain our swamplands next week.  Essential services?  I am reminded of the caution signs we'd see visiting New York: "Dig We Must!"
Joy in the water getting hot right before the rinsing is finished. Joy in the soap dispenser, the disinfecting wipes, in the hand soap that purifies and saves us from infection, not to mention death.
Simple joys in the time of the coronavirus.