.
Covid on a Clear Day
One day I window watched for things to write;
the next day I was lost, and underneath
the spell of fever, hot, with skin stretched tight,
I slept curled up with clenched and grinding teeth.
Then came the dreams of elevator shafts
that moved from side to side, not up and down,
and misplaced babies, loosed on Huck Finn rafts.
The nightmares drenched me, but, before I drowned,
when those two weeks had passed, I stood and walked
back to my window, weak, with blurry mind
to peek outside and find myself quite shocked
that all the world was managing just fine.
My neighbors’ lawns and lives seemed much the same
as last I sat behind this window frame.
.
.
Laurie Holding lives in Sewickley, Pennsylvania. Several of her poems have placed or won in the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest, Writer’s Digest Annual Poetry Contest, Goodreads Poetry Forum, and Writer’s Digest Annual Writing Competition. She is planning on a 2023 chapbook release, Sonnets and Their Shadows.
Enjoyed reading your Sonnet, Laurie, so true and well stated. Good luck with your chapbook.
The graphic is wonderful too, Evan. It’s true that you match them up beautifully to the poems.
The cyclicality (my new word!?) and the matter-of-factness, without any political overtones, makes this about the best Covid poem I’ve come across.
Two months before Covid started up I had the flu and was so sick all I could do was write a poem entitled ‘I’ve Got the Flu’. It’s just a litany of symptoms (unless I was patient zero), unlike the excellent, thoughtful and thought-provoking sonnet above.
Thanks for the read, Laurie.
Excellent description, rhyme, and meter! (And crazy, believable dreams!)
Laurie, I can wholly relate to the experience you describe so vividly and so beautifully. I particularly like the humbling turn… no matter how badly we suffer, the world still spins, the grass still grows, all without so much as a black cloud of mourning hanging over our grave situation. Wonderful!
Thank you for this fine poem about covid and your ending is so true.