sounds of the motors muffle along
as a masked-up widow reunited with her only
son siblings throwing maroon pigskin in the
air perhaps for the first time in a year
middle-aged fathers holding back a
tear wait. It wasn’t.
“men don’t cry,” they tell
themselves It was just fear.
dread. helplessness. death.
but not tears
a cacophony of clothes circling the
streets fridges, tv screens, microwaves
entering the backdoors of motorized
beasts peculiar families piqued
as 24/7 news machines generate
terror on a never-ending-cycle of
mass hysteria
just now: biochemical warfare
has been initiated in people head’s
all rational minds have been wiped out
quarantined to their own
devices the audience-less music
the laughter-less
comic the crowd-less
arena
was playing on the family’s
radio with their SUVs already
brim-full of toilet paper, meat,
and Purell Inside I see a
passport
burning on the dashboard
one coughing sister almost never got
back as wanderlust was curbed
as death tolls revved
up as panic
accelerated
as groceries were blindsided
as a new Plague crashed into Wuhan
as epidemiologists became mobile tv
celebrities as the flu took the back seat
and Darwinian survivalism sat on the driver’
seat as tribalism blazed the engine fumes
and as boppling opinions shouted to life an invisible
virus that simply revealed humanity’s moral ills
to every rearview mirror
and there was I
with my body as my sole (soul) vehicle
millenia of miles away from family
without a care for the wind nor for my seeming
isolation feet at perpetual unencumbered motion
fantasizing what worlds awaited me
in the wake of a single moment of clarity
only visible to those who mine their
minds and are in touch with the
magnum opioid of their surrounding
mindfulness
There I traversed a world
undiscovered
no vitamins nor antibiotics
just the soothing medicine
of sauntering.
where:
A troupe of deer grazed in unison
a lone squirrel chasing after the ether
mourning doves orchestrating a salient
symphony desolate dormitories whistling with
the wind voluptuous Maples exposing their
naked branches Isles of virgin grass untouched
statues stuck in solitary sand
winding roads longing to converse with
wheels hills calling out to mountain friends
the fumbled fog reaching towards the spring
sky all socially distanced
inevitably falling
short void
Of
Sun
At peak of the valley where years ago
my teenage self would howl
Boring, depressing,
loneliness! In such a secluded
abyss
I unearthed isolation’s bliss
Silence whispered a sacred
secret
Stillness gave light to a mourning muse
And in that space between clarity and virality
I stared at the imperceivable fibre that breathes
life That witnesses to God’s mercy and his wrath
That the molecules in my body knew to be its final resting
place That called itself Nature
Then…
I left.