I am restless. I am athirst
for far-away things. My soul
goes out in a longing to touch
the skirt of the dim distance.
(Rabindranath Tagore)
Shelves
On the bookshelf,
Shorebirds, Santi,
and Sherlock Holmes—
three guides
into the otherwhere.
All call me out, and back,
to other places, other times.
The longing is bone-deep
in me, even as I nest here,
ready to stay, to write,
to not move from my chair.
One leads to a Venetian church,
Florentine galleries, the Italy
it’s suddenly not possible to reach,
maybe never again. Another
to the inn on the South Downs
not far from where an ancient
Sherlock Holmes walked too,
kept bees.
Shorebirds carry the distances
in them, halve and quarter
the globe with the keen
scything of their wings in flight.
Window Glass
The window glass
clouded with seaspray,
cobweb, morning fog.
A Photo on Facebook
Wild Welsh ponies,
manes blowing in the wind.
Just before Lockdown
A young boy headed
down Delaware Avenue
with a bag of wild bird seed
almost bigger than he is.
Musical Interludes
A cello on a boat. A tenor in a remote
cabin in Poland, “the back of beyond.”
Evensong at various English cathedrals.
A young Russian pianist (son of scientists)
said to have a collection of old perfumes.
Paul McCartney with Linda and bagpipers
on the beach on the Isle of Mull.
Two Headlines
Palermo Pins Hopes
on Patron Saint
to Rid Italy of Coronavirus
Residents of Sicilian capital
pray for another miracle from
Saint Rosalia, who they say
rescued the city from a deadly
plague in 1625 (her bones
dug up by Franciscans
from a hill facing the harbor).
The Saint Who Stopped
an Epidemic Is
on Lockdown at the Met
Referring to the painting by
Anthony van Dyke, the artist
quarantined in Palermo in 1625.
Comforts
The floppy-eared rabbit on the teacup
cupped in my hands, the term for
the cupping (like coddled eggs) exact,
on this overcast morning, sky a soft
flannelly gray, and on my knees cuddled
in old denim (soft as talcum) a notebook and
a Phthalo Blue Faber-Castell Pitt artist’s pen,
to cheer me through these inward months.
An Empty Jar
The little jar of good
English apricot jam
gone now, the shop
and England too.
Vignette
A woman carrying
a blood orange and
an LP of Hummel’s
Septet in D Major.
Glasshouse
Walking on the quiet Monarch Trail
to the state beach, coming across
a small glasshouse I’d love to live in,
writing the skies, looking at stars.
A few panes cracked, web-like.
Remembering the glasshouses at Kew,
when we went looking for lilacs,
how badly I wanted to travel there
by riverboat, like royalty of old and
their musicians, carried down the Thames.
Indian Proverb
“Si tu vois tout en gris,
déplace l’éléphant!”
(If you see everything as gray,
move the elephant!)
Instacart Possibilities
Ordering saganaki
and grilled octopus
to be delivered.
Cleaning
Ancient dust mice
unceremoniously
swept away.
A Miscellany from Drawers
the Robert Bly line “where the spirit horses drink”
the face of Botticelli’s Madonna of the Pomegranate
a bath sponge
a lovely story about avgolemono
Research for Stories
rum rickeys
mango margaritas
Questions
“Is it so small a thing to have
enjoyed the sun, to have lived
light in the spring, to have loved,
to have thought, to have done?”
(Matthew Arnold)
Textures
The pigments in the window in Bloomsbury.
Baskets of beans and lentils, in the markets.
The wrinkled skin of the melon called toad.
Protests
The house smelling of za’atar,
while in the streets downtown
fires are burning and old
Mission Santa Cruz is vandalized.
Resolutions
I’ll get to my summer reading, decorate
a limoncello almond cake with edible
flowers. Make bread with cardamom,
tagine with figs. I’ll study something new
(Estonian, or the bassoon), walk by the
ocean in stripy Basque espadrilles,
watching improbable white herons
conjugating water, articulating grace.
Defiantly, I’ll go on finding joy, despite;
defend the calm place where I dwell.
Happiness my form of activism,
I won’t let terror defeat or define me.
Remembering
A church with Murano glass
chandeliers, prayers for boatmen.
Walking there one February,
on an earnest quest for those santi.
More Questions
“What are you doing?” he asks me.
“Just being with my words.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Christie Cochrell’s work has been published by Birdland Journal, Catamaran, Orca, Cumberland River Review (with a Pushcart Prize nomination), Tin House, and a variety of others. Chosen as New Mexico Young Poet of the Year while growing up in Santa Fe, she’s traveled far and wide since then, and recently published a volume of collected poems, Contagious Magic. She lives by the ocean in northern California—too often lured away from her writing by otters, pelicans, and seaside walks.