Tag Archives: poem about coronavirus

Meditations from My Room

Click on photos to enlarge and view captions. A poem follows.

Meditations from My Room

I share different  company in my isolation.
Dogs litter my studio floor,
and my backyard is
an in-between place for birds
passing as though at a freeway interchange,
this way and that.

A constant flutter of butterflies
stirs air around the orange and yellow thunbergia,
lush in this season that mixes sun and rain.
They soar down to the empty lot
and back again,
as though no creature can resist
collecting here in my domain.

Nature follows no rules of man.
It cannot learn obeisance or heed human leverage.
Our world, professional and polished—
how easily by nature now turned inward upon itself.

Our burnished world can hold no sway,
for nature heeds no golden cow.
Her empathy extended toward the broader view,
nature must change the things she can.

She has been patient  with us long enough. The time is now.

 

Prompt words today are empathy, leverage, patient, burnish and professional.

Enforced Reflection

Enforced Reflection

I’m keeping my composure and compensating for
the fact that they won’t let me venture out my door.
Given lemons, I make margaritas—take the opportunity
now that I can’t wander about in the wide community,
to revel in the riches that abound right here at home,
watching Jesus painting murals all around my dome.

I’m baking lots of cookies, although their fate is sad.
After painters ate just one or two, Diego was so bad
that he raced into the kitchen and made off with all the rest.
One friend suggested delicately it might have been best.
Would I have eaten any that remained? Yes, it’s true, I might.
I must admit my waistbands are getting sort of tight.

Perhaps it’s lack of exercise. Perhaps it’s medication.
Since I so rarely don street clothes, I have no indication.
I avoid the scales because, you know, they are so changeable.
Up one day but rarely down. (Wish they were more arrangeable.)
With nature as our trainer, perhaps we will be changed
in other crazy pastimes in which we’ve become deranged.

Fracking and polluting, casting all our trash
out there in the ocean, making a god of cash.
Nature has to teach us to change our foolish ways
by sending us all to our rooms to pass our “time out” days.
And perhaps now I’m sequestered and set upon the shelf,
Diego’s her reminder to take care of myself.

The image of Diego with a cookie in his mouth is from a retablo/art collage I’m making that is recording my time spent in Mother Nature’s Time-Out period. Why don’t you join me? Mine was finished but then I have to keep adding to it. At least a story a day. Diego was that day’s.

Prompts for the day are composure, compensate, opportunity, revel and trainer.
And, for dVerse Poets Pub prompt: Solitude.

Shelter in Place

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The dVerse Poet’s prompt today is the word “flush.” The poem is to be a quadrille—-exactly 44 words, not counting the title.

Rebuffing Human Nature

Rebuffing Human Nature

Nature is overwhelmed by us, regretting what we’ve cost.
We’re clouding up her atmosphere and melting all her frost.
She’s showing she’s indignant now by arming every gun.
Before we even see them, I fear that they’ll have won.
Her armaments are minuscule, but nonetheless they’ll beat us.
Weapons need not be visible in order to defeat us.
Determining their actions, our leaders often stumbled.
They find it hard to face they’ve been outstrategized and humbled.
When this mess is over, one more mess will be presented.
Mother Nature will not quit ‘til mankind has repented––
cleaned up all its messes, ceased drilling for her oil,
stopped polluting water and messing with her soil.
If we do not listen and stubbornly persist
in annoying Mother Nature, we may cease to exist.

 

Prompts today are overwhelmed, indignant, now, determine and frost.

 

Corona Confession

Corona Confession

My house is in shambles and yes, I’m contrite.
I shudder to see what was once a delight.
My Kindle’s been lost for at least a whole week.
Though I look and I look, I see not what I seek.

The videos loaned me a fortnight ago
still sit on my table, lined up in a row
along with a file, unfettered and scattered
of poems from the past that I really thought mattered

ten days ago when I resurrected
them from an old file folder that I detected
archived in a box hidden under the bed
(Though they probably would have gone better unread.)

Nonetheless, they remain on my table these days
as I wander around in a sheltering haze,
cooking a microwave cup cake or eight
and wondering why I am putting on weight.

Since there’s no one to witness my slothful adventures,
I don’t bother with underwear, makeup or dentures.
If it weren’t for this blog, none would know my disgrace,
for there’s no one to witness my falling from grace!

Prompt words today are contrite, shambles, grace, adventure and witness.

As an interesting footnote to this posting, did you happen to notice that little blue edge poking out from under the tablet on top of the box of videos?  Guess what? My Kindle!!!!

Captain, Oh Captain

Image by Kyle Ryan on Unsplash. Used with permission.

Captain, Oh Captain

We need a precise president, not one who estimates,
prescribing iffy medicine while there are still debates
concerning its effectiveness. It’s time to mutiny
and elect someone smart who has ability to see
that fabrication will not do when truth is all that works
to save a world that up ’til now is reeling from the quirks
of one who simply opens lips to see what will fall out.
Our head of state is lacking brains—of that there is no doubt!

An engine cannot run when it doesn’t have the fuel,
and since our ship of state is being fueled by a fool
who does not know the difference between reality
out here in the real world and reality TV,
we have to be the ones who care enough for our survival
to oust this man who runs our country like a sham revival.
We need to put the bounce back in a country that is failing,
and elect a brand new captain for the ship that he’s been sailing.

 

Word prompts for today are precise, engine, bounce, mutiny and care.

Please check out the news report below regarding Donald Trump prescribing medicine for Coronavirus that has not been scientifically or medically approved:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/fact-check-trump-pitches-drug-042807813.html

 

Restoring the Garden

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Restoring the Garden

Mankind’s not in a bubble, we are linked to Nature’s plan.
There are no separate provinces for animals and man.
All the riches of the world aren’t here for just our pleasure.
What we do to nature, it returns in equal measure.
This folly has gone far enough. The fools must be curbed.
The balances of nature have been cruelly disturbed.

Take back control from those who unwisely wield their power,
or nature will find other ways to make us cringe and cower.
She has put us in a prison in judgement for our sin,
providing us with jailers who control us from within
while those we have mishandled roam freely all around—
Fly and swim and crawl and run, scamper, leap and bound.

Only we are prisoners and will be ’til we’ve learned
not to take more than our share or more than we have earned.
This absurd behavior of the naughty little boys
who have seized our planet’s riches as their private cache of toys
will bring us all to ruin if we don’t curb their powers,
for they cannot see the truth of things up in their lofty towers.

 

For NaPoWriMo 2020, Day 6: Write a poem inspired by characters in Hieronymous Bosch’s painting “The Garden of Earthly Delights. “

Off Course

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Off Course

For those who cannot fathom the changes time has wrought,
tomorrow will be better, or perhaps it will be not.
Those who have championed progress, thinking it is for our betterment
might come at last to fathom that it’s been to our fetterment.
Why do we study science and waste our time at college
only to find out that we’ve been ruined by our knowledge?
We have been so quickly smart and sadly too late wise.
All our grand inventions seem to lead to our demise.
Can we make things better? Can we veer off to the light?
Or will we blindly keep our course, attracted to the night?

The word prompts today are: better, tonight, champion, fathom and college.

Coronavirus Reflections

Coronavirus Reflections

I’m exploring my options now that I’m alone,
my only distraction my blog and my phone.
Well, sure, I have dogs and cats I can tickle.
to ease, if you will, this sequestering pickle.

Yet I’m a pariah to humans I know,
so my social life is a little bit slow.
That it’s undeserved may be undisputed.
Nonetheless, unless I show up Hasmat suited,

none of my friends want to hug or shake hands, 
and when I explore, not anyone stands
closer than ten feet away from my hips.
Even my lover forgoes my hot lips!

Slick politicians may emphasize how
our social distancing affects the Dow,
saying, perhaps the stock market is mendable
so long as we declare seniors expendable.

This chain of reason sounds bogus to me.
I’d like to remain on my family tree
labeled as living for as long as possible.
I soundly reject being labeled as tossable!

Prompt words today are slick, tickle, undeserved, explore and chain.

Plaza Scene in the Time of the Coronavirus


Plaza Scene in the Time of the Coronavirus

Birds pick at rice
gone stale on the steps of the church.
Doors closed,
no choir sings matins
on this Sunday morn.

Rolling over in their beds
or gathered around the breakfast table,
the faithful listen to the mass
broadcast over speakers
loud enough to be heard a mile away,

while belligerent teens, sabotaging
their parents’ careful advice,
make the green benches
in the plaza across the street

their communal habitat.

 

Prompt words for today are belligerent, care, sabotage, rice and habitat.