Coronavirus has had us all go through some fairly traumatic experiences. I felt it was my duty to document this in a way that only a writer would think of. So here is a Covid-19 inspired poem for your enjoyment.
I hope you all find the peace among the hard days.
I hope you all find the peace among the hard days.
The Sticky Fingers
of Summer
It is difficult to
describe an absence.
The pause of a moment,
stretching off down the shady path of the unknown like a one-way-ticket to Route
66.
No more than a hiccup
in the Wheel of Fortune, as it breaks free to roll off downhill – with us all
held hostage inside… and all of us too afraid to scream.
I think of it most
when I pass by the swing park and the kids are missing. The swings are still or
sway in warm lockdown winds, winds that won’t be warm when we get out there
again because That’s Just How It Is.
The tarmac melts
underfoot. The metal on the slide is hot to the touch… but there are no kids in
the swing parks. No kids roasting their fingertips or writing their name where
the tar bleeds out… like we all did, when we were wee.
Oh and it isn’t over,
but people got used to it. That’s all that changed. Weeks turned into months
and then the kids came back, reappearing in the playgrounds to fill them up despite
the Scottish summer rain. The good weather was washed away with everything
else, so that there will be no new names added to the tarmac this year.
It’s not a write-off
yet, though. Harvest will be shorter than usual, but we will manage. Maybe we
will learn to celebrate it coming, just like our ancestors did? Wouldn’t that
be something? To see BoJo marking a solstice and declaring it is time to have a
harvest dance, while we all reap the fields.
There will be a
Halloween 2020. Everyone will wear masks, and nobody will complain about it –
except, perhaps, those few survivors we hear about on the news.
There will be a
Christmas 2020 and the world will have changed – but it won’t be over. It is
difficult to describe an absence, but it is not impossible. It is more
difficult to live through one… but we all have. By Christmas,
We learned to wash
our hands again. We learned to cherish the noisy children in the playparks. We
learned to appreciate the people we share our lives with. Some of us even
learned we couldn’t waste another moment of our lives with those same people –
and that’s OK too.
Consider these months
to be a great, unstoppable river that has gushed through our lives. It has hit
blockages downstream, dammed up, and made each of us stare at our own
reflections for longer than is healthy.
Now, the water is
receding. But as it goes, it washes away lives as much as it washes away our
outdated concepts. The river has taken people, destroyed homes, and left
families and communities broken – but we go on.
We have lost more
names than anyone could ever think to carve into that sticky summer tar, but we
go on. I suppose that is the point in all of this.
The world has become
smaller, more immediate, reminded us all that the planet could shake us all off
in a heartbeat, if it wanted to. No matter what we have lost in the process,
there is only one way to go now and that is forward. To go onwards. To keep
moving until time makes the great river nothing but a distant stream behind us,
in the landscape of life. We are not done yet.
And next year, come
Hell or High Water, there are going to be names in the damned road.
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