March 31, 2020

people are panic-buying chickens like they did toilet paper **

The salons are closed. Yoga mats lie curled at the corners of shiny floors
at the downtown gyms. The baking aisles’ staples have begun to disappear: flour,
yeast. There are lines past the sliding glass doors for the eggs that may not be there
when our turn arrives. And so, we are retreating to the source, the future yield 
of still-unplanted gardens fervent in our minds as we dig through overstuffed garages
for the tools we are certain live on the back shelves. Some of us may succeed, 
find ourselves the shepherds of a new, burbling flock, or the tenders of salad greens 
that will outlast an apocalypse. Others will dream of the cakes our mothers made,
reach a fingertip into a phantom bowl where a memory of batter still coats the sides. 
And the rest will notice, for the first time, how yellow the daffodils are.

** I borrowed this line from a recent New York Times article entitled “America Stress-Bought All the Baby Chickens.”