Park in Pandemic
No one told the flowers
“Keep your distance!”
“Wait a while!”
so unrepentant urgent
as they burst upon the eye.
From fields alive with golden
to the trees proclaiming pink
there’s an alleluia voicing
over tended beds and wild,
an exuberance of colour
dancing indiscrete, alive.
Beyond all dismal, sad statistics
calling caution to the world,
this luxuriance of blossoms
needs no leave
to simply be.
Impertinence
It could have been a meteor such
as lit the world before
the dinosaurs’ demise.
It could have come as fire
or flood,
the deserts’ march,
or even toxic smog,
but never this indignity,
the smallest viral life
eliminating us,
who’ve always caused
but now are strong casualty
of deserts,
forest fires,
storm surges
smoke of industry
and this one microscopic
runt.
These Times
No lack of fever
in these times,
with loud responses
irresponsibly professed.
No lack of breathless
declamations of excuse.
Not any scarcity of chill
upon the public view
of homeless, immigrant,
the unemployable,
the users dying
in our streets and homes.
The fevers, chills
and gasping breathlessness
of all our nation’s elders
and our world’s afflicted
call far more for our compassion
than mere pontification,
pointless accusations,
or the chattering banalities
assuring us that science
will soon come
to vaccinate us all.
If death is anywhere,
it will be everywhere and so
this mantra for these times:
Speak with calmness and
let kindnesses prevail
to keep each other safe,
if not forever
then at least for now.
Parsing the Pandemic
In any contest
numbers are the key —
how long?
how much?
how many?
We must know
the statistician’s facts
and estimates
for profit loss or death.
At all events,
a strange equivalence occurs
where even carnage
can assume
an aura of some grandeur
by its very size.
We want to know:
How many dead?
How do we compare?
What increase over yesterday?
For all these demographics
will dictate
a morbid reassurance
simply knowing where we stand
in time
and cost,
mortalities
and rank,
though none
can ever calculate
the tears and grief
this pestilence exacts.
Pandaemonium* February 2021
How did you spend your covid days
when millions spent their lives?
What daemons infiltrated your perimeter?
For you did not brave this time unscathed:
Self-conscious Schadenfreude
scarred your innocence
with every grim report.
Morbid Fantasy observed, detached,
your final gasping hours
dissolve away.
Proud Resolution may have talked
your old intentions into life,
to finish off some grand design;
and yet,
our better angel, Admonition,
knowing we advised so often
others live each day as if their last
requires we ask ourselves,
how did we spend this
our corona virus year?
and how will we now spend the next?
*the capital of Hell in Milton's Paradise Lost
the infernal regions : HELL eg. the demons of Pandemonium
PAN- + Late Latin daemonium
What Pandemic?
Trees do not care.
Moss stays engrossed
in digging in,
while blooms insouciant
may flaunt for all
their sweetest treasures
unconcerned
with statisticians’
tabulations
of mortality.
“Who cares?”
the seagull screams.
“What’s new?”
the ocean wonders
to the shore.
And hummingbirds
engage the blossoms
in the overpopulated
flowerbeds
and hopeful feeders
of our nervous,
sterile,
sanitized,
recalibrated
lives.