Wang Ping
ODE TO CORONA
Oh you quantum bugger, puniest thing on earth
Our cell is a hundred times bigger than you
Our body? Ten million larger!
Yet, why are we so terrified of you?
Is it because a teaspoon of seawater contains 50 millions of you
And 500 millions of you can stand together on a pinpoint?
Because you outnumber all life together on earth
Ten million more than all the stars in the universe?
Is it because you live on the edge of life?
Or you have no life of your own
Living as hijackers, parasites, cuckoos, vines
Clinging, sucking, copying life out of your hosts
Turning us into your slaves, zombies, loonies, mutants?
Is it because life is impossible without you:
No bacteria, cells or trees, no brains or civilization?
Is it because 8 % of you are buried deep in our genomes
As provirus, as our core makeups of DNA
Jumpstarting our T cells to fend off invaders?
When we get sick, it means
You, provirus, is dozing off, taking a break?
Because you spread like metaphors, defying space, time and logic
Quantum leaping from bacteria to bacteria, tree to tree, mosquito to mosquito
Through saliva, tears, sweat, mucus, blood, skin
Bird to bird, bat to bat, beast to beast, human to human?
Or a total tossup, bat to bird, bird to swine, swine to human…
As flu, polio, smallpox, herpes, AIDS, Zika, rabies, Ebola, SARS, Covid-19…
Wiping out Europe, America, locking down Africa, Asia
Turning the world into a Zombie land?
Because you suck our blood and steal our cells, then mutate our genes
Into cancer, or turn starch and fat into your food?
Because you kill us and keep us alive at the same time
Building our immunity, then making us ill so we get stronger?
Because you are biological pumps that jolt life, accelerate decay
Without you, we’d be buried under debris, bodies, woods
That won’t decompose or rebirth?
So what can I say about you, quantum buggers from cosmos
Should I hate you or love you or both?
I want to expel you but I need you to live
I need to kill you, but killing you also kills me because I’m part of you!
You’re the undead, vampire of the Earth
You’re the most terrifying, yet the most beautiful
In your magnificent crowns and diamonds
With your super efficiency, guile, intelligence!
You’re invisible & invincible
You are not alive, yet live everywhere!
You’re our enigma, our karma
You’re ultra vires, power beyond law and logic…
You’re the poison we have to live with and can’t live without
In fact poison is your Latin name
Chinese made it even worse: bingdu—病毒—diseased virus
Is that why you gave us Spanish Flu, SARS, Swine, Bird?
Or you’re just being you, a trickster, a teacher and master
Showing us how to respect all sentient being on the planet
Including you, Corona, the only way to handle you
Is to embrace you, the way we keep our enemy close
Building up our pro-viruses so that bad ones can’t occupy?
Is immunity nothing but billions of you quantum buggers
Negotiating for a house in our body, on the planet?
Is this another word for balance, equilibrium, co-habitat?
Is this your equation of Life = Love2?
THIS IS MY GARDEN – ON MEMORIAL DAY
It’s Saturday. I get up at sunrise, make tea, make coffee, stretch, then go out for my 12k meter row in the Mississippi. I’m a sculler. My single boat with long oars makes social distancing super easy and fun. The river is calm. The bluffs are breathtaking. Bald eagles fly over and across, guiding my spirit.
The river is my temple, my 10K meter long prayer, daily.
Today is Memorial Day, marking summer, growth, long days, short nights, mosquitos, flies, bees, wasps and beetles, vacations, beach, sunlight, joy, crowds…
But it’s quiet, too quiet, almost. Though Trump ordered all churches to open, against governors’ order, Minnesotans still follow their instincts for preservation. No church is open. No choir for me (thank God!). People are morning. America is mourning. Its death is reaching 100,000; America is sick with the virus, almost 2M, mostly the old, the chronically ill, the black, brown, indigenous, the meat packers, the essential workers, the “not usual folks like us,” according to some congress people.
America’s wallet is empty, along with its calendar, except for the zoom funerals and meetings.
Americans are already mourning the summer.
From the river, I go to the Farmers’ market, downtown St. Paul, to buy seedlings for my garden. It’s the best market I’ve ever known. I grew up with many, in China, in America, in Europe. Farmers’ markets are wet markets, selling fish, meat, poultry, dairy, mushrooms, bread, fruit, vegetables and seedlings. It’s still early in the season. Most vendors sell rows of flowers and vegetables. This year, vegetables sell faster than flowers. Everyone is planting their own food. Our instincts tell us to prepare for a long haul. I thread my way through the masked crowd. People are smiling, behind the masks. Even the grouchy ones relax their brows. Farmers’ market is a happy place. How can it not be? Food makes people happy. Flowers make people smile.
I buy collard greens and spinach for my garden, already full with potatoes (red, yellow, purple), tomatoes (Early Girl, Purple German, heirlooms, Zesty Stars, Lemon Boy…), pole beans, snow peas, cucumbers, broccoli, chard, collard green, cauliflower, Brussel sprouts, celery, peppers (Thai, devil, ghost, jalapeno), carrot, radish, beet, garlic, onion, chive, basil, parsley, tarragon, oregano, mint, Shepard’s purse…
They all seem to have grown a few inches from the rain last night. The ground is finally warm. It’s Memorial Day. It’s summer!
My potatoes are already 2-3 feet tall. I thin out some leaves, so that the pull beans and cucumbers will get enough sun to climb. Once they latch on the branches I pounded in next to the seedlings, they’ll climb against the wall, the window, all the way to the second floor. I’ll need a ladder to pick their fruit. Meanwhile, the potatoes are storing its energy (starch) underground, through the green leaves above ground. Each plant will yield a box of root. From the way they’re growing, I know I’ll have at least 3-400 pounds of potatoes this year. I’ve promised my friends some, and will store the rest in the garage closet through the winter, my “root cellar.”
Home grown potatoes are the wonder of the earth. Its taste comes close to Peru’s los papas, not quite, but close. Once you have that taste of the mother earth on your tongue, you won’t be able to tolerate the pale bland globs from a supermarket.
So are the home grown tomatoes. One bite into their juicy flesh, you have the entire sky in your mouth, its color, glamor, sugar. This year, my garden will give me hundreds of tomatoes. I’ll can and make soup with them, with leeks and squash.
On my knees, I dig and mix the earth with homemade compost and peat moss, then plant each seedling in the garden. It’s so full already, but I always find a spot for everything. Mother earth has a spot for every life, mammal, bird, fish, insect, for every tree, plant, blade of grass.
As I put in the last collard green, I notice last night’s raindrops on King Solomon’s leaves, then on hostas, peonies, ferns, dogwood, Korean maple, the remaining petals of azaleas, magnolia, the sprouting Japanese hemlock, onto the potatoes, tomatoes, cauliflower, broccoli, spinach…They shimmer and roll in the light, in the breeze, like newborns.
My summer calendar may be empty, but my garden is full, lush with life, despite the mourning in America.
This is how I celebrate the Memorial Day, to open the season of summer…
This is my garden, my study, my lab, my temple, my river, my earth, my little universe.
I hope it’s yours too.
Wang Ping was born in Shanghai and came to USA in 1986. She is the founder and director of the Kinship of Rivers project, an international project that builds kinship among the people who live along the Mississippi, Yangtze, Ganges and Amazons Rivers through exchanging gifts of art, poetry, stories, music, dance and food. She paddles along the Yangtze and Mississippi River and its tributaries, giving poetry and art workshops along the river communities, making thousands of flags as gifts and peace ambassadors between the Mississippi and the Yangtze Rivers.
Her publications include My Name Is Immigrant, poetry, Hang Loose Press 2020, Life of Miracles along the Yangtze and Mississippi, 2017 AWP creative non-fiction award, University of Georgia Press 2018, Ten Thousand Waves, poetry from Wings Press, 2014, American Visa (short stories, 1994), Foreign Devil (novel, 1996), Of Flesh and Spirit (poetry, 1998), The Magic Whip (poetry, 2003), The Last Communist Virgin (stories, 2007), all from Coffee House, New Generation: Poetry from China Today, 1999 from Hanging Loose Press, Flash Cards: Poems by Yu Jian, co-translation with Ron Padgett, 2010 from Zephyr Press. Aching for Beauty: Footbinding in China (2000, University of Minnesota Press, 2002 paperback by Random House) won the Eugene Kayden Award for the Best Book in Humanities. The Last Communist Virgin won 2008 Minnesota Book Award and Asian American Studies Award.
She had many multi-media solo exhibitions: “We Are Water: Kinship of Rivers” a one-month exhibition that brought 100 artists from the Yangtze and Mississippi Rivers to celebrate water (Soap Factory, 2014), “Behind the Gate: After the Flooding of the Three Gorges” at Janet Fine Art Gallery(2007), “All Roads to Lhasa” at Banfill-Lock Cultural Center(2008), “Kinship of Rivers” at the Soap Factory(2011, 12), Great River Museum in Illinois(2012), Fireworks Press at St. Louis(2012), Great River Road Center at Prescott (2012), Wisconsin, Emily Carr University in Vancouver(2013), University of California Santa Barbara(2013), and many other places.
She collaborated with the British filmmaker Isaac Julien on Ten Thousand Waves, a film installation about the illegal Chinese immigration in London, the composer and musician Bruce Bolon, Alex Wand (Grammy award winner), Gao Hong, etc..
She is the recipient of National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, New York State Council of the Arts, Minnesota State Arts Board, the Bush Artist Fellowship, Lannan Foundation Fellowship, Vermont Studio Center Fellowship, and the McKnight Artist Fellowship. She received her Distinct Immigrant Award in 2014, and Venezuela International Poet of Honor in 2015.
Wang Ping teaches creative writing as Professor of English at Macalester College.