Will the lines be six feet apart?
Will these hexameters be heroic like Homer’s?
(Will) (each) (word) (have) (to) (be) (masked) (?)
Will there be poetry insecurity?
Will there be enough poetry to go around?
Will poems be our preferred form of travel?
Will we undertake odysseys searching for Ithacas inside us?
Will poetry go viral?
Will its dis/ease infect us?
Will it help build up antibodies against indifference?
Will poems be the only safe spaces where we can gather together:
enter their immense silences
see snakes slithering inside sestinas,
listen to nightingales singing on the boughs of odes –
hark! a lark in the terza rima,
a hawk in a haiku?
What if only poetry will see us through?
What if this poem is the vaccine already working inside you?
Julia Alvarez 2020
Nice poem! I look forward to a time when the words that have infected our writing and talking the past year are no longer so dominant.
You and me both.
Love it! Thanks so much for sharing. <3
I am glad you read it. Thank you Bette. Have a great weekend.
(PS I had printed two free chapters of one of your books and can’t find it anymore. Did I get it from your blog?)
You did! Here are the links https://4writersandreaders.com/dog-bone-soup-chapter-1/ and https://4writersandreaders.com/pure-trash-the-short-story-by-bette-a-stevens/ Hope you enjoy! <3 Have a lovely weekend!
It was the dog-bone-soup. Thank you Bette. I appreciate it.
My pleasure. <3
Excellent. Thanks for sharing Bridget.
There’s probably no vaccine that will keep us from writing poetry.
I think poetry will never discriminate. It doesn’t care who writes it. It doesn’t care what it’s about. It doesn’t decide if it’s good or bad.
It may say, “Tsk tsk,” if we stop writing it.