Welcome to Poetry Friday! We are well into July and today hosted by Jan at Birdseed Studio. Thank you, Jan, for hosting! Stop by and see what she has to offer us this week.
During Covid, I’ve pretty much done what I could to avoid getting sick. I have been vaccinated and boosted and avoided crowds. I traveled cross country in April without a problem. So when our oldest son from California asked us to meet him for three days in New York, we drove there.
But, I immediately had a feeling, immersed in the crowded sidewalks and restaurants, that things might be different here. I could imagine the virus everywhere.
And we came home with Covid. Our son, who recently had it, didn’t get reinfected.
Poor me! But though I regret being a link in the viral chain of transmission, for three days we had a happy visit. Vaccines and boosted, we weighed the pros and cons and took our chances. Four days after testing positive, we are feeling a lot better. We got away without serious consequences so far.
I was inspired to write this poem by my experience this week.
A WEEKEND AWAY IN THE TIME OF COVID 7/22 The virus won't care if you are bedridden; it found a new home convenient, unbidden. Soon aching and shivering, fatigued and hacking plans for next weekend? I wouldn't start packing. It's just how it is, took a chance, got sick, like others do too, not hard to predict. I suppose it's too early to forget, to pretend the pandemic is over. Nothing personal,Friend. ©Janice Scully 2022 (Draft)
I often think how different the last two years would have been if the sick were not disappearing into ICU’s and if Covid had been a different disease.
What would have happened if it were the bubonic plague, which inspired poet John Davies in the early 1600’s to write stanzas like this, stanzas that conjured visions of “carcase-carriers,” and citizens flooding streets in fear, guards on the roads:
TRIUMPH OF DEATH by John Davies LONDON now smokes with vapors that arise From his foule sweat, himselfe he so bestirres: “Cast out your dead!” the carcase-carrier cries, Which he by heapes in groundlesse graves interres.— Now like to bees in summer’s heate from hives, 5 Out flie the citizens, some here, some there; Some all alone, and others with their wives: With wives and children some flie, all for feare! Here stands a watch, with guard of partizans, To stoppe their passages, or to or fro, 10 As if they were not men, nor Christians, But fiends or monsters, murdering as they go. Excerpt from "Triumph of Death" HERE
Well, we don’t have Bubonic plague and though we might have Covid still, there are reasonable remedies and more to come. Even having Covid, it feels less threatening at this moment to me than the threat to Democracy.
Now I’m telling myself, “Lighten up!” Really, I’m trying.
I hope everyone is healthy and all the teachers and librarians on Poetry Friday are enjoying what has been for some, at least here in Syracuse, a lovely summer.
Janice
