For the past four days, I've been writing a series of poems based off of a Washington state #covid-19 policy that was flowed out by Governor Inslee. He wants to use a four phase approach to reopening Washington which he outlines here. I used that PDF as a prompt, trying to visualize how reopening will look, how it will feel. All the while, I feel the tension in the air. How can this plan work when so many people, so many states are disregarding the gravity of this #pandemic ?
Phase 4: We Are
Not Ready
I sit in an
auditorium, sounds amplified,
the building
shell-like, the shape of an echo.
People file
in, sit with friends and family,
a cacophony
of conversations, each person
wants to be
heard. There are no distances
between us.
Again, I am the fish
tucked
and laid
neat into a can.
Again, I ride the bus,
and stand in
a cramped elevator.
Again,
the awkward
silences and squeezed lines
outside of
coffee shops. We are many
and each one
of us a host, a vector.
No one will
forget this time, when we stood
apart, our
lips and nose covered up until
none of us
could decipher what part
of us is
human. It is the purpose of a virus
to move into
and through us, change us,
like how a
river carves its signature into land
with canyon,
gorge, marsh and delta.
So too the
virus has embellished us
with its
marker, and yet, we don’t know
if it is
indelible or not.
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