A brief quarantine diary -no alarm! the joy of second breakfast and the oblivious birds perhaps get dressed – for them -haiku? entirely insufficient to experiment with impunity on rhymes for pandemic, quarantine, immunity -trivially fare thee well, small talk not even the dull weather merits a mutter -seriously like baseball scores statistics but what I want to know – truly – is, how are you? -carry on the evening sky is clear of planes bound for Paris and London – keep calm and …. Reading the Old Master Each morning in March I studied a verse of the Tao Te Ching. Lao Tzu, wise as a baby new to the world, wrote these words: the tree you can’t reach your arms around grew from a tiny seedling. Think: the power of life resides in alveolus and capillary, the tiny, the tenuously held. And think: the tiniest thing -a butterfly’s wing- can blow our house down, can empty planes, fill up hospital beds, shutter shops and schools, sever sweet intimacy, scatter brains, cancel everything going. No, not everything: not the tree you can’t reach your arms around, not the tiny seedling. Unable, for now, to take refuge in words, I take refuge, for now, in spring’s sun. Mia Burrus April 2020