All The Time In The World

Holding Time

 This time is dystopian; not imagined but real. It is riddled with uneven emotions like slow drips coming out of a faucet to an aqua torrent from Niagara Falls.

I feel as if I have all the time in the world and yet I have no time. The days slip by like warm taffy. Projects and goals have wavy boundaries. I move through the day in a hyper alert daze. This pandemic, poetically labeled, Covid 19, has restricted and liberated simultaneously.

I am more socially isolated allowing me the freedom to roam the inner corridors of my imagination. This multi-verse virus has created an unusual dichotomy; the surrealistic cave I find myself wrapped in has veiled my time in a shroud of lethargy and energy, coursing in tandem through me.

I plan, I plot, I stand still - and wonder, what will the world be like when we collectively awaken from this Kafkaesque dream?

These two poems were written one month apart, similar emotions, yet an increasing dread of *something wicked this way comes:

Pandemic Time l

The days run into each other

like children on a playground - 

pressed together like p b & j.

What day is it? I wonder.

I test myself.

I think it’s Wednesday.

Are you sure?

I think so.

I doubt.

I look at my phone for confirmation.

 

The days run into each other

like children on a playground -

carefree

careless

careful.

 041020

 

Pandemic Time ll

These times move me

to moments of intense clarity.

I pull myself into this moment,

this now.

 

Staying in this present

keeps the wolves of fear at bay -

as they lurk

at the outer edges

of my invisible eyes.

 

They wake me at night

pounding on the door

of my heart.

 

I lurch into awareness –

and repeat this mantra,

              I

              am

              here

as I slow the internal thunder.

The hammer becomes the feather.

050420

*Ray Bradbury