The Familiar Rooms, Poem

In August 2020 home is the only place

I am allowed to be for very long.

So after folding away the chores

I shelter in place, in my small house of habit:

in all the familiar rooms

of my body.

I crochet the shawl for my sister,

yarn over, pull through,

again and again down the hallway

of my old deft fingers.

I open the flute case

to unlock the music room

and exercise muscle memory in octave runs

of quarters, eighths, sixteenths.

But memory is not enough: my arms, legs, lungs

must visit my secret swimming pool,

the only one open,

the one I will never own,

where I enter the silent water: slow song of stroke, breathe, kick.

I am the only person here.

By ten my body becomes a bedroom.

Sometimes I can find the quiet key to sleep, sometimes not.

The closet of dreams is usually closed

and if it opens I can’t remember the names of the people

moving through a clouding future, people I am sure

I once knew, must know now, names slipping,

slipping from my grasp.

Carol L. Gloor

2020