Hi to all my visitors, and warm wishes to anyone struggling with pain and / or mental illness right now.
I’m back with another bad attempt at poetry, this time focussing on the price of the pandemic.
Despite my sheltered little world, I managed to catch Covid 3 times, and know of multiple people who were killed as a result of infection. The wider community feels this even deeper, because of the volume of losses. I’m unsure if the grief of Covid is something we’ll even be able to move on from. I grieve for those we lost, the change we experienced, and for my own physical limitations as a result of Long Covid.
Here is my little poem about it all.
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Why not me?
Three times it came
And though it left
Each time I greieved
For those bereft.
It didn’t get me,
Though it could.
But why not drown
This old driftwood?
It took my friend.
She wasn’t frail.
Just fifty years,
For her life tale.
It took the man
From up the street.
A sporting coach
Kept kids upbeat.
My checkout girl
Was stolen too.
A mum of five –
The family glue.
Patrick’s gone.
A happy man.
Delivered smiles –
With post, he ran.
The smithy kids –
Asthmatic crew –
Had help to breathe.
Just made it through.
Care home neighbours,
It took half.
Spread like wild fire –
Guests and staff.
My own mother,
Our clucking hen.
It found her too.
Never clucked again.
No one safe
From deaths toll ticker.
The worlds it’s oyster
And we’re the liquor.
So when I ponder
Those it found,
I’m shocked I’m still
Somehow around.
Healthy people,
Much to achieve,
Gone too soon.
For them, we grieve.
But here I am
A broken soul,
With jellied lungs,
And bones of coal.
Don’t get me wrong
I’m glad I’m here.
But it ain’t right
To feel some cheer.
Rouletted wheel
No one forecast.
So what comes next,
Now COVIDs past?
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Thanks for reading 💜
Creative Steph 