Quarantine
SHERRY CRAVEN
March 17, 2020
What does that mean? Do I
move to a tent or a safe
room with concrete walls?
Or maybe lock the doors
and crawl under the bed
with my cat?
I don’t have angry red spots
or a rash that looks like foam
on the beach as the tide rolls in
or a body-boiling fever, no cough
dry as dead leaves, no aches
stalking my limbs like a thief
in the night, so quarantine?
Social isolation. Toilet paper.
Paper towels Hand sanitizer
and they don’t mean vodka.
If they did, we could lick
our fingers while quarantined.
I know how to self-isolate.
Hell, I do that anyway when the
world has sucked my oxygen,
made soup of my stirring emotions.
This quarantine, self-imposed
isolation rings a different bell of alarm.
The ringing is everywhere. There is no
escaping, well, maybe a few super rich
can buy first class tickets to good health,
but here we are, the rest of us, counting our
rolls of toilet paper, stacking canned beans
while over-ingesting Covid 19 information 24/7.
Social media instantaneous combusting.
Our heads ache worse than a scorching fever.
But then there is touch without touching.
It’s not easy. We’re out of practice,
stumbling over our national subjectivity.
We need GPS to the find the place where
compassion and empathy live.
Pass the futuristic nightmare of hazmat suits,
pass the border of egos, save a few paper towels
for someone else. Our new holy people are Doctors Without
Borders and healthcare workers going into battle daily.
Our devils are biases and egos, hubris and fears.
The view has changed but the earth is still blooming
into another spring. The grass is pushing its way to sun
and the brilliant cardinal is building a nest.
The leaves on my Japanese maple insist on thrusting
into life lacing the limbs. We can still dance again.
SHERRY CRAVEN has published poetry in numerous journals and anthologies and has had a poetry collection Standing at the Window published by vacpoetry.org in Chicago. She has also had flash fiction and creative nonfiction published and read poetry on NPR as well as being included in Quotable Texas Women.
