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Written on March 14, 2020 – things have gotten worse.

Well, I was going a little stir crazy in my apartment. My cat, Ketz, and I were involved in a staring contest, and I was putting off developing my online courses to sometime later this week.

Being the walker in the city that I am, I took a shorter-long walk this afternoon. The weather was crisp, a classic early spring sort of day. I stopped at the Dollar Store on Somerville Ave. and grabbed the last traces of dental floss, the rare gem of toilet paper, and paper towels.

Somerville Ave.

I noticed a flashing solar-powered sign that read “Keep Six Feet of Distance.” I noticed that while walking many people were following the six-foot rule, as they swerved away from me like I was a leper.

Harvard Yard was pretty deserted, and the cops told me the Widener Library is closed for the foreseeable future. That’s understandable, but it has been a haunt of mine for almost 30 years, back when I was in graduate school obsessing over novelist Henry Roth’s trilogy.

Well, I will miss it, a great place to do work and study. The cafés like the Tata and Pavement were open but very few folks were in there, and some of these venues spaced their sparse patrons far apart. There were a few people with masks, but they really were not part of the virus landscape as of yet.

The Harvard Coop was open, but there was only a handful of patrons. I ran into a bagel bard (The Bagel Bards are a Saturday morning literary group that meets at the Au Bon Pain in Somerville). Doug, my namesake, and me shot the breeze. He wants to get a job with the census. I said, “You will be exposed to a lot of people.” “I’m not worried,” he replied, as the long shock of his gray mustache nervously twitched.

I stopped at the poetry section and browsed through Merwin. He had a great poem about a woman trying to domesticate a fox. Neruda, a fine poem about when one closes a book, and then only the world opens. Mary Oliver’s dog poems, and Frank O’Hara Lunch Poems. My hands were all over these tomes. I guess I should be ashamed of myself. I walked back to Somerville. The air had a strange feel to it. The birds chirping seemed a bit ominous to me now. People looked at me like they were asking me a question. I hope this passes soon. Stay well my friends.