Marjorie Moorhead
Since the Epidemic
In the early years of my survival,
I kept a downward gaze
not wanting to be seen
not wanting to have to explain.
It took joining Instagram to bring
my eyes up and raise my look out.
I started to see things; details
in everyday places.
I catalogued rust, paint peeling,
bricks, and graffiti; dried leaves
on old drain grates. And I started sharing.
Posting with hashtags, winning best picture
contests for doors, wabi-sabi walls
or lost abandoned toys. The outward gaze
helped me be more comfortable in a world
where I’d lost my place.
Eventually, it was poetry I would find
as language and space to tell the story
of who I am; my journey forward,
memories back.
Marjorie Moorhead is the author of the chapbooks Survival: Trees, Tides, Song (Finishing Line Press 2019), and Survival Part 2: Trees, Birds, Ocean, Bees (Duck Lake Books 2020). Her poems have appeared in Sheila-Na-Gig, Porter House Review, Verse-Virtual, Tiny Seed Literary, Amethyst Review, and other journals, as well as in several anthologies, including most recently Covid Spring; Granite State Pandemic Poems (Hobblebush Books, 2020, Alexandria Peary, ed.). Moorhead writes from the NH/VT border.
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