Pandemic

by Lyn Hagin Meade

It’s been a year now,
A year of listening to the news
For the hype and the numbers
For plotting graphs and learning logarithms
While the beat of our lives slurs and bucks

We are wondering when we can stop
Smelling the flowers and hearing the birds.
We want the tang of runway grease;
To hear the hum of voices and
Receive small human gestures

We are wondering when the rainy day bank account
Won’t loom so large
And freedom will be an extra day off.
We want to lament the stuffed carriages
And sing in the snaking motorway jam
When apathy can be a dalliance again.

This is war, without the blackout curtains
Togetherness, without a friend
We are agents for an invisible
The unequal parts of us are naked –
We are buried in our reduction.

And what if the sunlight never comes?
If we keep spinning the pedals
On a soul cycle to nowhere?
Wasting away waiting

A future postponed
With vague remorse.

Copyright © 2021 Lyn Hagin Meade, All Rights Reserved.