By Susan Sanders
Wisdom in a Whisper
Strange, how COVID-19
virus spread and stumped
dubious doctors’ ability
to save everyone.
The Dread
Every town is a ghost town.
And big cities become
50% smaller.
Forced from contact
fear consumes
faster than this
invisible dread.
The dead are waiting
for arrivals in black
beetled covered coats.
Survival is primal.
Stock up on luck,
shelve more cans.
Masks stave away
invisible particles
that stick deeper than
paranoia or suspicion.
Fault lines inside the earth
shift and crack, oceanic waves
lash back, tides ebb and
ease the edge of this
deadly dread.
Susan Sanders teaches writing classes for the Community College of Vermont and Northern Vermont University. She has travelled to 45 of the 50 states and lives in Jeffersonville, Vermont.
Facebook: www.facebook.com/susan.sanders.505/
Susan Sanders: At the time I composed these COVID poems, I was living 5 miles south of Canada. The border was closed and the small city of Newport, Vermont was literally a ghost town for two weeks. The eerie and mysterious nature of this virus evoked stark imagery which gave birth to fifteen new and very different poems.