Stubborn muzzles against the earth

The mergansers are back. And the golden eyes and the mallards. The swans visited a few weeks ago but the ice hadn’t melted yet, so they left. A bald eagle flew over our house. A cardinal has been hopping around the front yard and, near the apple tree, the first crocus leaves are poking through. When the windows are cracked, we hear the geese. 

Yesterday morning it was 11 degrees Fahrenheit, but still, spring is pushing her way in. 

Khalil is fully vaccinated. My sister Amy visited. I’m working on writing projects that I love.

Amy and Khalil and Honeypuppy

Last Thursday, we arrived home from school pick up and the sun was warming the backyard and the waves were crashing against the rocks. We made our way down to the shore and sat, watching the water that was, only a few days before, frozen solid. Gratitude, in those moments, washes over us. 

Also. There’s another covid wave here and it feels like the thousandth straw on a broken back. Not so much the wave itself, but the government’s response. In late December, Ontario stopped public PCR testing so the only way to track local numbers is through hospitalizations (lagging) and wastewater (noisy). From those imperfect stats, it would appear we are in a second, equally severe Omicron wave. Word-of-mouth confirms it. And then, in early March, they removed mask mandates. Masking is a choice, they say. 

The language about individual risk assessment makes me livid. How can an individual assess risk without information about case rates? And, more importantly, how does official policy and language still not reflect that we are a collective? 

Disabled people offer their wisdom in the form of bone-deep knowledge of what it means to belong to each other. This could save lives. 

When we lived in California, I learned that the redwoods, in the absence of roots deep enough to support their height, hold each other up under the soil. The trees do not stand alone; they hold hands, underground, supporting and feeding and communicating. It’s responsibility, purpose, and nourishment. 

People do not stand alone — poetically and scientifically. Public removal of masks puts at grave risk those who are too young to be vaccinated and those for whom vaccines are not effective (six percent of people). We all know that the efficacy of a mask diminishes significantly when only one person in an interaction wears one. My mask protects those around me. Public health measures, by definition, are not individual decisions. 

Disabled people also know that ALL bodies and minds are fragile. We are watching millions of people with Long Covid join our ranks. We are aware that around ten percent of vaccinated people who get Covid will develop long-term symptoms. In that light, masks protect everyone, not just the vulnerable. We have seen how the world fails to accommodate people who have bodies that become unproductive. For two years, we have been the canaries in the coal mines, shouting. 

And that’s why I’m angry. Nothing makes me more livid than a rejection of logic except, maybe, the rejection of humanity. Society is, still, rejecting both. 

And yet, just like in 2020, when every new flower felt like a poem in the face of global terror. Spring is here again. Delight and pain will always coexist. Gratitude and fury. We can keep pushing against the whole earth with our stubborn muzzles and we can find it delicious. 

Thank you, as always, for reading. Writing this newsletter is one of my favorite parts of every month. 

Moles 
Mary Oliver

Under the leaves, under
the first loose
levels of earth
they're there -- quick
as beetles, blind
as bats, shy
as hares but seen
less than these --

traveling
among the pale girders
of appleroot,
rockshelf, nests
of insects and black
pastures of bulbs
peppery and packed full
of the sweetest food:
spring flowers.

Field after field
you can see the traceries
of their long
lonely walks, then
the rains blur
even this frail hint of them --
so excitable,
so plush,
so willing to continue
generation after generation
accomplishing nothing
but their brief physical lives
as they live and die,

pushing and shoving
with their stubborn muzzles against
the whole earth,
finding it
delicious.