1.
How are you doing?

We call from windows and sidewalks, from half-closed doors. From three feet, five feet, six, and more. From phone and email, from laptop and letter. From every distance, we reach out.

How are you is greeting and worry, is wish and prayer.

2.
Curled in and against, I nearly miss spring, arriving fresh-faced and eager with sunshine, blue sky and sparrow glee. Beyond my inward self, the world breaks open with dogwood, magnolia, and cherries in bloom.

Dogs are barking, lawn mowers revving, a car rumbles to a start.

Even in this global crisis, life goes abundantly on and on.

3.
Remember when people died of natural causes?

What, really, is natural?

4.
Make something, is the inner urge and outer order. And so artists paint, bakers bake, singers sing, and poets write.

Ruth, a respected teacher and poet, lives in a care facility in Oregon, where visitors have been banned to ensure the protection of the vulnerable residents. She keeps writing on, writing through:

Twenty-twenty Vision

These days, weeks, months curl in parentheses

closed off from the whitewater current

even from the peaceful stream. No dailyness

to rely on, no boulders to hop from this to the next—

No next.

And not much then. Past seems irrelevant,

shifting, unstable . . .

Take my hand.

Today rely on this grip.

We have our now.

Breathe.

— Ruth Harrison

5.
Is this the reset?

Months from now, will we savor a meal at our favorite place, our faces close, hands clasped tight? Will we share dessert, our forks next-to-next, and not think twice about what has touched, with who, and how?

And at the house, will our friends gather? Will we shake hands, pat backs, and hug hello? Will I embrace my father without fear, and offer more than a distant wave to the kind neighbor passing?

Tell me, will we kiss again, reckless and sure?