Tag Archives: poem about coronavirus

Unwrapped Gift

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Unwrapped Gift

You thought life had an itinerary all mapped out and planned?
You thought it was a deck of cards, all dealt out and fanned?
You’d play this card, then that one and win the game with ease?
Fate saw your plan and chuckled and brought you to your knees.

So much for jubilation, for celebration and
your misapprehension you’d been dealt a winning hand.
Humanity is just a part of Nature’s total plan.
Evolution didn’t end when she invented man.

In one hand she holds her sketch pad, in the other an eraser.
One she uses to create herself, the other to efface her.
One creation a success, another a mistake,
Our triumph’s not the only choice that she has to make.

It’s time for the whole human race to eat its humble pie
and align itself with nature, or make the choice to die.
Nature’s not here to conquer. It’s here to show the way.
The truth of that’s the gift that we must learn this Christmas Day.

Prompt words today are humanity, itinerary, celebrate and jubilation.

“Far from the Madding Crowd”:

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Solitary Confinement

My world is a clam with me gathered up in it.
With no one else to arrange it or spin it.
I do not deviate, wander or travel.
No complications for me to unravel.
Life proffers no parties and no invitations.
No drop-in guests and no visitations.
Gatherings are not my present domain,
so if I were invited, I’d surely abstain.
I’m sealed in my world— happily, sublimely,
for group celebrations are simply not timely.
Lately for me, the crowds are not madding.
It’s taken a virus for me to stop gadding.

Prompt words today are clam, deviate, timely, proffer and gather.

Read the Signs

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Read the Signs

Days of wild adventure, pulsing with delights
are turning into zombie days that fade to zombie nights.
Nothing on our agendas. No traveling, no dates—
our calendars reduced to onerous empty slates.

It does no good to protest. God hears not when we ask.
We merely have to don that necessary mask.
Though every instinct urges camaraderie,
Mother Nature warns us that she will wait and see.

Will we clean up our messes? Put out every fire?
Calm her winds of warning before we all expire?
Ban plastic from her oceans, stop digging for black gold?
Cool the global warming and restore the cold?

If we will not listen, she’ll only turn deaf ears
to all our present pleadings, to all our future fears.
Oh foolish foolish children, just dealing with effects
instead of paying heed to what nature expects.

 

Prompt words today are instinct, nothing, protest, onerous and zombie.

Home Vacation

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Home Vacation

Exotic locations hold no sway with me.
I’d rather relax right here under my tree.
Here I’m sovereign of place. I’m the queen of the lot.
No finer vacation can ever be bought.

No accidental airline disaster,
no luggage to lose and I get here much faster.
The kitchen is close if I’m in need of sipping.
I need not wear masks and there’s no need for tipping.

Travel right now isn’t all that it was.
Its credibility lowered because
since we are not through with enforced quarantining,
we travel through videos and magazining.

So bring out the cards and bring out the dice,
and a dry gin martini , with olives, on ice.
If we can’t travel to Vegas or Reno,
we’ll have to make do with our home-grown casino!

Word prompts for today are sway, credibility, accidental, sovereign and location.

If Things Should Return to Normal

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If Things Should Return to Normal

Just in case the world we know ever returns to normal,
I feel we’ll need reminders for behavior less informal.
So, let me reacquaint you with the former art of dressing.
Introducing color-matching, underwear and pressing.
It’s been a number of months now—five, to be precise—
since there was the necessity to put on something nice
and face the maze of traffic to go to an event.
So before you visit places where you once often went,
you may require reminders, lest in trips to spots exalted
you could find your entry may otherwise be halted.
Entrance to most restaurants requires shirt and shoes,
along with all your other clothes. Forget this, and you’ll lose
precious hours driving home to remedy the fact
that you’ve forgotten basics of how you used to act.
Out there in the real world, genteel folks do not dare
to go about half-dressed and it’s good to cut your hair.
Put on a little lipstick and tweeze hairs from your chin.
Do not gobble down your food and do not slurp your gin.
When the world returns to normal and you go out once more,
just in case, please pin this little check-list to your door.
Though reminders may be premature, be glad that you have gotten them,
for by the time they’re needed, I’ll most likely have forgotten them.

Prompt words today are maze, precious, introducing, exalt and dress.

At a Distance

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At a Distance

In these months of social distance, it seems lazy does not matter.
We grow our hair and fingernails and stir the cookie batter.
The main excitement in our lives is whether gravy’s thickening
and when our waistlines do the same, the truth of it is sickening.

Out in the world there’s conflict when factions take to task
the all-consuming question: to mask or not to mask?
Confined to home, we find conflict in books or television
or when we try to teach the kids the facts of long division.

Our galas are all in the past as are the school fetes
as social life is narrowed down to children and to mates.
Whether our lives have changed for good is open to debate.
The only way to know for sure is just to sit and wait.

Prompt words for today are lazy, matter, sickening, gala and conflict.

Blue Monday

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This poem was inspired by a misread line in Jan Wilberg’s Red’s Threads blog. What she said was, “Everything is very still here.” How I at first read it forms the last line of my poem, which also fulfills the dVerse Poet’s prompt of “Blue.” In place of one quadrille, the poem is actually composed of two quadrilles, the last line of one rhyming with the first line of the second:

Blue Monday

It’s not that I’m lonely. I’ve plenty to do,
and yet for some reason, I’m just feeling blue.
The thunder has stopped, though the night’s overcast.
The stars I saw three nights ago were the last
interrupting the dark that surrounds like a shroud.

Here I am still apart from the world’s rowdy crowd.
My dogs curled up in slumber, my cats in their bed,
all of my company curled in my head.
Alone in my house with familiar things near,
everything, everything’s still very here.

 

For dVerse Poets Quadrille prompt: Blue.

King of Fools

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King of Fools

It’s a virtual world we sink into for fun
now that our worldly contact is done.
Facebook is our friendship and Skype our salvation,
Zoom our replacement for kids’ education.
It’s our succor in sadness, replacement for sport,
when others malign us, our means of retort.
Our childrens’ frondescence confined to Twitter,
how can they resist being surly and bitter?

We’re culpable, all of us, I must confess.
How could we let things get in such a mess?
Money our God and diverted by pleasure,
we sacrificed a more vital treasure,
giving up liberty, we were distracted
by a buffoon who reenacted
presenting reality just as a show—
impressing with posturing, bluffing and dough.

And those for whom books were replaced with a screen?
They couldn’t tell the difference between
what entertained and what was for real
and that’s how he managed to posture and steal
liberty—both on a scale that was national
making decisions stupidly irrational,
and our own liberty, now that we’re trapped
within our boxes, trussed up and wrapped

with only the foolish wandering round
making decisions, unmasked and unsound,
the dupes of a Mother who’s finally decided 
that all of these humans whom she has abided
for thousands of years are on their way out,
aided by their foolishness, without a doubt,
and by their leader, that king of all fools
who will bring down the world with his asinine rules!!!

 

Prompt words for today are frondescence, culpable, virtual, succor and sink. All photos thanks to Unsplash, used with permission.

Coronavirus Reflections

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Click on photos to enlarge.


Coronavirus Reflections

Thus cloistered, I grow pensive. What shall I think of next?
Would thinking of the past or future render me less vexed?
My wild garden beckons. The dogs cavort and bicker.
Hummingbird wings vibrate. The swallowtails all flicker
here and there between the flowers each side of the path.
The small dog rolls and scratches. Perhaps he needs a bath.

As I inflict myself upon this wild abandoned scene,
will I disturb them here with my laptop and magazine?
If I lie very still they will barely know I’m here.
The dogs will settle all too soon and shift to lower gear.
Yesterday soon vanishes. Tomorrow goes unplanned.
Only the present holds me. Past and future go unmanned.

Word prompts today are cloistered, pensive, flicker, inflict and wild.

Lack of Willpower During the Coronavirus Sequestering: My First Two Excuses.

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Lack of Willpower During the Coronavirus Sequestering:
My First Two Excuses

I’ ve run out of storage for all the provender
I bought in advance, thinking chances were slender
that in a month there’d be staples enough.
I thought that the going was going to get tough.

So with my freezer full and no cupboard space free,
the only place left to store food in is me.
I forage on fudge and I’m gorging on chips—
storing them here on my waist and my hips.

Please come to my rescue. I’m tortured by guilt.
Last year at this time I was pleasantly built,
but this forced isolation obliterates “no”
as an answer to chocolate and cookie dough.

You may be amused by my failure at coping,
but I am not drinking and I am not doping.
It isn’t my fault. I’m a victim of fate.
It’s my body that’s yearning to assimilate

cookies and candies and pastas and pies.
It’s my body’s fault that I’ve grown a size.
With no one to stop me, I’ve just given in.
I guess you’d describe me as formerly thin!

Words for the day are rescue, torture, obliterate, assimilate and amused.