What Rough Beast | 06 18 20 | Tessa Horn-Botha

Tessa Horn-Botha
Covid-19 Haiku

Elastic shadows;
days, nights fuse in vacuous
corona silence.

Daily, prayers ascend;
brotherhood of burnished hope
tearing fear apart.

Memories surface
creeping stealthily from graves;
times of reflection.

Balcony singers,
chorus of compassion, love;
music’s perfect force.

Tinged global outlook—
rattled stocks quiver and plunge,
futures’ masked forecast.

Forever altered
earth, humanity and sky;
singed, humbled landscape.

—Submitted on 06/13/2020

Tessa Horn-Botha‘s poems have appeared in Ja. Magazine, and in the anthology Breaking the Silence: Painting My Future (People Opposing Women Abuse, 2017). She is a musician and educator from South Africa, now living in Qatar.

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