 This week I’m offering something completely different. Friday night, after trying—fruitlessly—to keep up with the news relating to the COVID-19 cases swirling among our government’s highest officials, I woke in the middle of the night with the following words running through my brain. I finally got out of bed and wrote them down. You will see, clearly, that I have no training as a poet. I know nothing about proper forms or meter or rhyme schemes. So I hope you’ll read this as my nocturnal wordplay, an example of what happens when my subconscious wrests control from my conscious thought. I have not altered what I captured during those feverish moments. I have not allowed subsequent news or insights to inflect these thoughts. I offer this simply as one citizen’s subliminal attempts to make sense of the harrowing world we live in. As the Dominoes FallI wake up and wonder:
Was it all a dream? This fever-pitched Swampiness holed up inside my head For what seems like millennia But was only long enough To topple democracies And eradicate futures and pasts, Fury and white-hot hate Scorching our throats and Trampling our dignity Until one by one they started to fall, Hubris humbled by truth, Surrendered to a force So tiny it arrived Undetected by the Armies forming in our streets, Long guns tossed over shoulders, Chants rending the night, A force too subtle for their Rigid minds, too potent for their Star Wars defense. We had thought it a scourge, Nature doing battle against Man’s unconscionable crimes. As we watched helplessly Thousands succumb—a million-- Innocents lost, Our heroes, our warriors, Our suckers Who shared this precious gift and Delivered us, our nation, From certain death.
6 Comments
Robert Mcwilliams
10/4/2020 07:23:19 pm
Well done. At first I typed beautifully done But nothing of this beautiful except your ability to capture the essence of what is going on in our world.
Elizabeth E.
10/5/2020 04:02:54 pm
Thank you Sallie for this....like you, I would like to share your thoughts with some of my local colleagues. In our area we are a focal point of extremes....the most narrow minded are imports, eager to battle in our streets for a path they themselves don't understand
Fonda McWilliams
10/5/2020 11:32:50 am
Wow, Sallie! You have really captured something that feels true here...and, of course, I love that it comes right out of the dream world. :) It is the greatest of ironies that this little microbe might just be the catalyst that changes our course and saves us in the end. It's the old paradox at work: it is only when we suffer that we are moved to change and grow. By the way, your poetic sensibilities are very strong, in my view. It's a very nice poem!
Tessa Bishop Hoggard
10/5/2020 11:37:25 am
You beautifully weaved words that capture America's current state of chaos. How I yearn for decency to descend from those sworn to justly uphold the laws of the land! Jim Bannister was right about Marvin Gaye's 50-year old song called What's Going On? Like the song's lyrics, your poem is so relevant today.
HANNAH HELM
10/5/2020 11:14:08 pm
That is an amazing little piece and a appropriate analogy for our times.
Bob Patrick
11/1/2020 05:24:42 pm
I would say your free verse style is pretty darn good. Sure captured many elements of the Covid crisis in a very concise piece. The dominos continue to fall -- a woman died from Covid on a flight from Las Vegas. Except for 3 flight attendants, no one was notified till the new media investigated. Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
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