The national emergency was declared one day
before Pi Day.
Grocery shelves emptied
of disinfectant, bleach, diapers, tissue and towels,
rice, beans, pasta, frozen vegetables, broth,
sugar and shortening, lard.
The next day we woke early,
pulled fruit from our freezers,
pumpkin and pecans from our cupboards,
rolled up our sleeves,
and worked the flour with our hands.
We channeled love into crusts and fillings,
and fed pie after pie after pie into our ovens,
more pies than we could eat alone
or with our families,
so we gave them away.
We gave them first to our neighbors,
then to merchants working nearby,
then to strangers we saw in cars
and the homeless brothers and sisters we found asking for help from passersby,
unable to afford the luxury of social distance.
Still we had too many,
so we brought them to the polling places
and the hospitals
and the libraries
and delivered them with thanks to the servants civil
whose work was too important to keep them inside.
And still we baked more,
enough to feed the world,
we lined them up end to end,
they encircled the globe.
Only then did we stop and go home
to hold and love those closest to us,
knowing we had done
what we could.
Kim Kishbaugh is a former journalist who looks for magic in the universe and sometimes finds it. She is currently looking for magic at a safe social distance. Her work has been published previously on Headline Poetry & Press, and also at Escape into Life, goodbaad, and Tiny Seed Literary Journal.
Image is an artist rendition of the shape of the coronavirus. Yes, it is heartshaped. We believe this is to remind us to use this time to come together.
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