They say that creatures, usually shy and prone to verges, walked cock-sure into 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 living room a bargaining with the self, a move towards the possible,
(beyond the tryings of the mind.)
They say that even as men and women lay frail, recognition flashed across their faces, as they absorbed the efforts of hospital-workers, taxi-drivers
Dedication reigned. In supermarkets, pharmacies, in ordinary apartments
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.
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 meandered, unpolluted
Children danced on their own, not immune but almost so, and the elderly took extra steps
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 galloped to shore.
Okay, it said, sonorous, and grey
Okay, said the spray
Leaders showed themselves in all colours
Rainbows drawn by children dried to crisps
in the sunshine of watched-through windows
Parks shone, un-littered emerald, their silence only pandered 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
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