The Copying Monk

How words and poems are getting me through the quarantine

I am like an Irish monk in the scriptorium, copying copying copying, building a nest of words, a web of sentences, wings of verse and simile. Every night (almost), I pull out my little blue journal and add another poem or quote or two or five- once I start, I find it hard to stop. My pen wants to keep tracing such lovely lines, such perfectly positioned jewels of syllables until I am drunk with them, intoxicated by beauty and heartbreak and emotion and utter, unbreakable humanness. Just one more, I tell myself.

I sit on the couch most nights surrounded by words, my poetry journal on one side, my regular journal in my lap, a small stack of books propped against the pillows. Throughout the day, I carry a stack of books with me from table to desk to dresser and back to the table, reluctant to let them out of my sight. Books and poems and writing and words have always been a sanctuary, but now I am a moth hovering as close as I can get, fanatically filling myself with words. I am copying, coping with the sameness and uncertainty of the days ahead in the only way I know how.

I let each word drip into the empty space within me until I remember that peaches taste like joy and kindness is a shadow and the word let is everything we will ever need to hear.

This piece was originally published on my personal blog at JillFuller.com.