I have been sheltering in place with my family for two weeks now. We have established a routine at home that involves school work/work for the adults, gardening time, cleaning, cooking, reading, listening to music. Things I know we are all doing in solidarity with each other.

This morning I got up to upload the poems that came in for “Poems to Lean On.” To read through the poems and respond to those who sent them has become something I very much look forward to. Each  poem I upload touches exactly a part of where I find myself emotionally, mentally, physically.

I find these poems deeply comforting, more so because the senders are all folks in Washington State. This is us. This is what we are living through in our Evergreen State, in our Columbia-River State, in our Palouse State, in our Puget Sound State, in our Olympic Peninsula State, in the Yakama, Colville, Cowlitz nations, in all the tribal territories across Washington territory.