19 Ways of Looking at a Pandemic

Poetry for our time. What can I say, pandemics, wildfires, ash and soot and particulate matter of all sorts rain down upon us. And of course all this in the time of tRump and BLM. What next, a plague of locusts, floods of Biblical proportions?

Here is my offering for today, up at the International site Poetry and Covid: 19 Ways of Looking at a Pandemic, with due respect and apologies to Wallace Stevens:  

 Nineteen Ways of Looking at a Pandemic

By Dotty LeMieux

1.

the sound a boulder makes
before beginning
its deadly downhill
roll

2.

sunflowers
in their art deco vase
track time by the sun
so well you can set
your watch by it

3.

hush, don’t wake
the old man sleeping
on the park bench

4.

one purple crocus
in my weedy front yard

5.

hey, what do you think
you’re doing?
don’t you know
you can’t play basketball
without touching?

6.

I’m calling the police!

7.

rain in spurts
taunting us between
the times of quiet

8.

why does standing in line at Safeway
for an hour and a half
remind me of the drought years?

9.

they loosened EPA regulations
so people can get back to work
polluting again

10.

the police are too busy
confirming deaths
on park benches
to answer calls
about unsanctioned basketball
games in the park

11.

Presidential Press briefing —
I told him — don’t return
her phone call; she’s not
nice to me

12.

the boy in California
who died
when the clinic
refused him entry
no insurance

13.

in New York the first buds
of April break through
hoping for someone
to admire them

14.

They’re not doing the tests;
they said to come back later —
blind man in the park smoking

15.

I can smell his smoke

16.

16. if you wonder where the homeless went
    when they kicked them
    out of the park
    just check the far side
    of the closed-down Community Center

17.

winter has been its own very long year
this year

18.

woman into phone, slumped
on the top step of her front porch —
they say the test won’t come back
for at least a week

19.

after all this,
spring