Upside World

SHERRY CRAVEN

April 15, 2020

It’s a time when the world is turned

upside down: trees are rooted

in the sky, wispy clouds reach arms up

from the blades of grass and weeds.

Rain swirls up and down and side to side

from the thirsty earth, cooling a hot holocaust.

Disease is rolling into our lives like

a Midwestern tornado, leaving little

behind, only broken bits, slithers

of heart and soul and body, and even love.

Normal will never be normal.

The only antidote, the only defense

is we ourselves. Hold the center tight;

it will hold. Ventilators, masks, six

feet, gloves, aloneness, all float around

like the sandwich and cup of coffee on

a NASA spaceship where gravity does not exist,

objects floating in no sequence, no order.

The order is us. Gravity is

within. The spiral of emotion,

fear is spinning so grab it and draw

it to you and use the gravity of heart

and belief that, by god, the center will hold

in spite of the death carried by a microscopic

tiny virus we can’t see but we can beat

because the human center can hold against

the torrential winds of an invisible enemy.

SHERRY CRAVEN has published poetry in numerous journals and anthologies and has had a poetry collection Standing at the Window published by vacpoetry 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.