They say that creatures, usually shy and prone to verges, walked cock-sure into the cities and sniffed the air
And birds circled above airports, painting journeys into empty streams of sky.
There was an opening,
despite the closures,
In every home a bargaining with the self, a move towards the possible,
beyond the tryings of the mind.
They say that men and women worked with such aching care that even as the sick lay dying, recognition flashed across their foreheads, as they witnessed compassion’s endless flow
And dedication reigned. In supermarkets, pharmacies, in ordinary homes
People sat still and… zoomed,
reached o’er-washed hands across the void and remembered that touch is also metaphysical.
In every twitter feed and insta show, in all the whatsapp chats:
this new world unpicked, re-understood.
And the trees swayed easy from the lack of traffic fume
As the readers and the listeners drank from this seclusion
like milk
A tiny virus, spikey as a medieval morning star,
was harming and enjoining, harming and enjoining
Entreating all to only think of
It.
Rivers sighed, unpolluted
Children danced on their own, not immune but almost so, and the elderly took extra care.
One morning the caretaker of our apartment building said his mother died
the week before in Kerala.
I could not cry, he said. Could not go home to say goodbye.
Ocean still lapped on shore.
Okay, it said in soft blue tones
Okay, said the spray
Leaders showed themselves in all colours.
Rainbows drawn by children dried to crisp
in the sunshine of watched-through windows
Parks were places of un-littered emerald, their silence only whispered to by rain
And the streets housed an Edward Hopper Sunday glow,
all lines and light without much traffic, onward flight.
It was a time, they said, when the Earth began to breathe again
Released its ever outward prayer,
Received the purest inward air.
It seems trite but WOW WOW WOW friend!!
Sent from my iPhone
>
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you 🙂
LikeLike