CORONAVIRUS: POETIC REFLECTIONS
A compilation of 7 poetic reflections on the 2020 COVID-19 crisis.
The Virus and His Twin
Lon Pringle, Social Studies teacher
The virus knows no geographic boundaries or geologic barriers. It transcends the highest mountain ranges, the deepest oceans, the greenest of valleys, and the bluest of skies.
The virus cares nothing for political affiliations or parties, schools of thought or economic philosophies. It ignores all capitalists, socialists, and Marxists. The virus does not discriminate between rich and poor, it has no gender preferences, no sexual persuasions, and infects straight, gay, lesbian, trans, queer, and curious with pure equality.
The virus knows nothing about height, weight, eye color, or hairstyle. It could care less about national origin, education level, profession, marital status, or elected position. The virus cares nothing about where you live, your beauty, your confidence, your vanity, your insecurities, your strengths, your weaknesses, or your deepest fears, hopes, or dreams.
It doesn’t know or care about family pets, memories, experiences, mom, dad, or great-uncle Rupert.
The virus knows no boundaries, no limitations, and no barriers. It is then, in the final analysis, pure.
But as we take stock of the characteristics and behaviors of the virus, let us recall that there is something else in this most awesome, vast, and wondrous universe that behaves in much the same pattern, ignoring all boundaries, limitations, and barriers.
It’s called love. Remember that!
So We Beat On, Boats Against the Current
Krista Hennessy-Jacks, English teacher
We reverberate between cautiously optimistic
And ever-so-slightly terrified.
I have never been one to so easily accept my own mortality.
We tear up so easily at the good people and the good news we see.
And, yet, we feel so utterly disheartened and defeated by waves of helplessness.
The unfairness of things:
Those who are dying.
Those who don’t have access.
Those without care or concern for others, (doing anything else but what they ought).
I have never been one to accept defeat too easily.
When we see milestone moments cancelled or put on hold, we try to remember why…
WE KEEP OUR DISTANCE.
We battle on… so we can keep it together, just when we feel as if we’re falling apart.
So we can remember that we are a sum total MORE THAN merely ourselves.
So we can ALL be accounted for once this is O V E R….
I have always been relentlessly optimistic, though it’s a bit harder now.
But, I find that it’s a battle I keep fighting each morning, each setback, each dark moment:
When I feel like time is moving interminably slow… and yet we all are LOSING so much time.
Social Distancing
Margot Pilling, 9
“How are you?”
The question that gets asked less and less.
“Okay.” (But I’m not.)
I feel it all.
The pain, the mourning,
The sudden silence that came on like a summer storm,
The weight of the world’s despair.
I feel complicated things because I am a complicated person.
We all are.
I am not bored because I have nothing to do.
I am bored because I have nowhere to be,
No social life to navigate,
Nothing unique to say,
Because everybody has been leveled down to the same game.
Like a freshly mown lawn.
We are no longer important; we are just obstacles to those who are.
And so we wait.
Stuck in the same story while separately in our own homes.
And so we wait.
And we wish the world would get better soon.
The Gravity of Our Cores
Dorothy Angle, English teacher
We used to say six feet under to mean:
A literal and metaphysical separation,
The distance between those we can access and those we cannot.
And now, instead, we say six feet apart;
Or two grocery carts’ worth;
Or the length of an average car;
Or two adult golden retrievers.
Though sometimes the distance seems greater than carts, or cars, or goldens.
The toll this must take on a human soul,
One that evolved to crave the company of another.
A craving our survival once hinged upon and might yet still.
On the sidewalk we know to move apart, yet
Within us something stirs, sensing
In each other the primal core that glows.
Our heads incline imperceptibly towards one another,
Like magnets drawn to a northern or southern pole, a force
Mysterious and powerful and yet
A mere shadow of the gravity that pulls
Us into the orbit of other souls.
No wonder, then, that our bones ache from straining
Against that hardwired reaction, the writing
In our humanity.
Are You Lost?
Hilary Loder, English teacher
Dedicated to the Class of 2020
Sitting alone
Watching that movie
Again
Glittery gown
In a heap
Next to the black polyester one
Online school hours
Not at 3 a.m.
Are you lost?
4th quarter grades
Friends
Being busted by security
FFC
Baseball games
Graduation rehearsals
Beach week
Hugs
Are you lost?
Family
Too much family
Ground Hog Day
Text
Snap
Snap
Snap
Text
AGAIN?!
Are you lost?
Soon
Life again finds North
Soon
Doesn’t replace what’s been stolen
Are you lost?
You shouldn’t be
Because you’ll always
Have me
Die, Corona
Mary Ellen Webb, English teacher
Sung to the tune of the Knack’s “My Sharona”
Ooh my little ugly one. Ugly one.
Guess I’m gonna get some time off, corona
To the groce-ry stores we run
Stores we run
Hoping for some Charmin Ultra Soft, corona
Never gonna stop
It’s a virus
Such a nasty thing
We’re never gonna stop
Cause we’re teachers
Though no bells will ring
Fie fie fie fie fie (wooh)
You oughta die, corona
You oughta die, corona
In a sudden stillness
Helen Mondloch, English teacher
In a sudden stillness I move between
unease
determination
gratitude
sadness
and surrender
I always end with surrender
I surrender to knowing
that I am part of a collective spirit called humanity,
something greater than myself and this moment,
that God’s will is in this somewhere
though I have no clue where it hides
I surrender to knowing
that I must act to keep my mind and body strong,
and my heart open,
and my creative energies alive
I surrender to knowing that
I see through a glass, darkly.