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Poets tackle the Coronavirus pandemic.
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One
of the big jobs of poets is to reflect on the world around
them. Whole books were quickly assembled
after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and
after the launch of the War in Iraq. The international
refugee crisis and the U.S.
persecution of asylum seekers and
immigrant families is another recent
example. And, of course, resistance poetry has become a staple of the Trump maladministration. So
the Coronavirus pandemic and the extraordinary changes it has brought to all of our lives is fertile gist
for verse. Here is a short roundup of just some of the poems and poets whose work I have
encountered recently on social media.
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Rev. Theresa Novack.
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The
Rev. Theresa Novak has been featured in previous National Poetry Month
entries. She frequently posts insightful poetry on her blog Sermon, Poetry, and
Other Musings. A graduate of the University of California
at Berkley, she had a career as a Social Security Administration manager
before enrolling at Star King and
embarking on a second career as a minister. She is the Minister
Emerita of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Ogden in Utah.
She lives in California with her wife.
Covid Poem
Live Your Life
Live your life
Such as it is
now
This isn’t
ending soon
The world grows
smaller
Shrinks down to
a neighborhood
A house, a room,
a prison cell.
Our connections
are more distant
But deeper too
As we share the
fear
The grief, the
loss.
Howling in the
night
We find some
small release.
Live your life
Such as it is
While you have
it
While you can.
Relish the
sunshine
Savor the
flowers
Bursting with
spring
They are
What your soul
needs now.
Talk to your
neighbor
From a distance
of course
Help them if you
can.
We are all
refugees now
There is no
escape.
There are no
borders
Anymore.
This is the
whole world
A planet in pain
and fear.
Live Your Life
Live your life.
It is what you
have
For now.
Enjoy each day,
each moment
Find a way to
laugh
To smile.
Courage will
come.
This isn’t
ending soon
I hope not for
me
Or for you.
—Theresa Novak
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Ken Balmes.
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Ken Balmes is a stalwart of the McHenry County poetry scene who
has read at the Raue Center for the
Performing Arts in Crystal Lake, at Atrocious
Poets programs in Woodstock, and
at Poetry Night Open Mics at the Hidden Pearl in McHenry. His work is deeply personal and often lingers in
the quiet spaces of life.
He is noted for the devoted
care of his disabled and wheelchair bound wife who he brings to
all of his events and for the kilts he
always wears. He described himself as a “still
living white male of mixed European ancestry (Celtic, Spanish, German, French Canadian) who never had a class in poetry.”
Covid Poem
Alone in the
house
Not that
unusual.
But mandated so
Makes verbal
constraints
Feel as if
physical.
A dictated
singular solitude
Hiding from a
twenty-first century plague.
Calling to
neighbors across the way
Daring not to
get closer.
Passers-by in
the street
Greeted, but not
approached.
At the market
Runs on goods
and cash.
Days of overcast
skies
Deepen the feel
Of imaginary
bars on my door.
Those who could
have prevented
Or lessened the
scourge,
Did not.
Recalling Poe’s
Masque of the Red Death
How fitting if
they should meet that fate.
Yet out my
window
Daffodils rising
in the lawn
Birds at the
feeder free to fly about.
There is hope,
or at least solace
Life endures.
—Ken Balmes
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Jerry Pendergast.
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Jerry Pendergast is a Chicago poet and activist who frequently shares his work on the Chicago Revolutionary Poets Brigade Facebook group and can be seen
at readings around the city at venues like The
Guild Annex and Green Mill Tavern. This highly topical poem was inspired not only by Easter but by the Covid 19
death of John Prine and other
artists.
Easter 2020 USA
A line by Yeats
Revisited
Was it needless
death after all?
Fingers that
will never press another key
Others that will
never strum another string.
Or hold another
bow
Songs left
unfinished, unsung
How low have we
sunk?
Feet on a bed
with the rest of
someone’s body
mouth waiting
for a breathing aid.
Will they ever
touch a stage or even a floor again?
spring the body
in a leap
or a glide?
If not, will it
be needless death?
Is breath, that
will never again
send notes rising
and falling
Voices that will
never sung or speak
another word,
Goodbyes remote
or only imagined
needless death?
When recovered
unable
to thank some of
those
who helped them
because they are
gone,
how
deeper can we fall?
A panel that has
no answer
Not even a guess
Are these
needless deaths after all
Yes.
—Jerry
Pendergast
Copyright 2020
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Jessica Miller.
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Jessica
Miller is
a young woman who lives in Crystal Lake and recently began
attending the Tree of Life U.U. Congregation
in McHenry. About this poem she
wrote, “Patrick Murfin from UU Tree
of Life inspired me to write a pandemic poem. I’m looking forward to
his event [Poets in Resistance] in
the future! It’s been awhile since I’ve written anything, but I’m feeling the
muse today.”
Untitled
Day by Day
Hour by hour
Minute by minute
I’m starting to
know people
Who’ve got the
Corona
A teacher
A friend
A Mother
A Brother
Touching us all
Sneaking past
Our carefully
Or not so
carefully
Crafted tower
defenses
Churches open in
defiance
Anointed in the
BLOOD of Jesus
And the
innocents
Just trying to
pay the rent
With a job in
the gig economy
To put food on
the table
That has been
taken TO and FROM
With great risk
We navigate the
Invisible
China
Virus
Invisible
But making it’s
self more visible
Day by Day
Hour by Hour
Minute by Minute
The death toll
rises
1,997,666 DEAD
—Jessica Miller
04/14/2020
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The Old Man reading.
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And finally one from the Old Man recycled from just a month
ago. Somehow it seems longer.
Love in the Time
of a Plague
Have
you wondered what it would be like—
in an Egyptian mud hut when the
Angels of Death
did not passover your door?
When the calls of bring out your
dead
rang from overburdened carts on
London’s muddy lanes?
When wrapping your children in the
Small Pox blankets
so kindly given to you by the
invaders of your country?
When Yellow Fever seemed to rise in
the swamp air
or Typhoid and Cholera did their
mysterious work?
When Doughboy camps, refugee havens, and
troopships
brought death dwarfing the gore of
the trenches?
When ordinary summer colds sent
children in the thousands
into iron lungs on crowded wards?
When the unwanted and despised were
reaped by God’s wrath
and rest stood aside until the
innocent were touched?
Now
we know, or imagine we do, as Cassandras cry alarm
and we retreat into isolation.
That
fear and isolation may be more lethal than an alien virus
sapping our lonely souls even if
our bodies are spared.
Now
comes the time of love in the age of a plague—
how do we reach out to caress a
face we cannot touch?
—Patrick Murfin
March
15, 2020
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