Marjorie Moorhead
When the Pandemic Is Over
There will be something else.
Pessimistic, I know…
but, will the planet even be living?
Will it be nurturing home to a species
who’ve abused and disrespected it so?
When the pandemic ends, I will hug
my father who’s been sealed up
into the pod of his elder care home.
I will dance and sing, wave feathers,
light a smudge stick.
I will feel good for my son who’s still trying
to have college experience.
And my other son who’s been working “remotely”.
When the pandemic ends when it ends
Will it end?
Will there be another, different virus?
Will we have killed off all underprivileged
and underserved, leaving only
previously pampered survivors?
When the pandemic ends, I will pick a bouquet
and smell the flowers.
I will drink pure clear water and wade
at the meeting of sand and surf on a beach
where there are only shells and no plastics
strewn or oil surfacing in footprints.
When the pandemic ends
we’ll sit around a campfire
and tell our tales. We will remember the lost;
the dead and damaged.
When the pandemic ends, will I have learned
something? Anything?
There will be tv shows, plays and books
about it. We have to tell our stories.
When the pandemic ends
ends
ends.
Fingertips will touch another
and really feel
feel
the surface of a skin
that isn’t our own.
When the pandemic ends
clean air will be valued.
Breathing will be sacred.
We will build statues to our lungs.
The shape of lungs, like a heart.
Breath. Breathing.
Feeling. Seeing.
When the pandemic ends,
will there be heightened awareness?
—Submitted on 08/31/2020
Marjorie Moorhead is the author of the chapbooks Survival: Trees, Tides, Song (Finishing Line Press 2019), and Survival Part 2: Trees, Birds, Ocean, Bees (Duck Lake Books 2020). Her poems have appeared in Sheila-Na-Gig, Porter House Review, Verse-Virtual, Rising Phoenix Review, Amethyst Review, and other journals, as well as in several anthologies, including most recently Covid Spring (Hobblebush Books, 2020).
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