It happened in a snap that first spring.
The cold rains of the pandemic came knocking,
remaining uninvited for three long winters.
I could do little but get lost in trivial things.
I traveled the back roads between despair and hope.
I had to deviate from the path trodden. I had to pay attention,
be resourceful, depend on the stranger.
I got softer at the center.

Soon my pockets were full of pieces of heaven
that elevated the tenuous into holiness, gratefulness:
a wilted bloom, a stone, a holy card, an acorn.
I birthed into being a poem, a painting, a garden.
And also there were those simple moments preserved
like my rhubarb jam: my bare feet in the grass, the birch leaves
butterflying down, the ride on the swing,
a full measure of sustenance in the freezer:
green beans, strawberries. And on the shelves,
canned beets, squash, garlic;
summer waiting to be eaten in the dead of winter.
We baked cookies for tomorrow and the next.
There was sourdough in the cake plate by the vase of lilacs.
All we needed was pressed down, shaken together, running over.
I was saved eating these small bites,
piece by piece.

Angela Hoffman’s poetry collections include Resurrection Lily and Olly Olly Oxen Free (Kelsay Books). She placed third in the WFOP Kay Saunders Memorial Emerging Poet in 2022. Her poems have been published internationally. She has written a poem a day since the start of the pandemic. Angela lives in rural Wisconsin.