Don't Come Any Closer - Here, Have Some Virtual Love - X O

These are difficult times for us all.  Social Distancing, don't touch your face,  wash your hands while singing Happy Birthday (I've gravitated to Africa by Toto), stay home, and only essential worker go to work.

I fall into an in-between category.  Our office is having us work from home and therefor I am 90% at home.  My work is essential, but can be accomplished at home except for periodic court hearing. Those I go to the courthouse for. It's like a ghost town. Court hearings are generally with about 5 to 7 people. The respondent is on a Polycom along with other testifying witnesses.  These could occur daily, but tend to be a couple to three days a week. Sometimes there are more than one on a given day. So, I am otherwise sheltering at home.

I have had more time to write, to read, and binge watch Homeland.  Claire Danes and Mandy Patinkin are phenomenal actors. I haven't binge watched anything in several years.

There has been more time to think as well. That includes paranoid thoughts about Covid-19.  About after the curve is flattened, how many people will still be contagious and for how long. I for one don't see this danger ending for months not weeks.

Having more time to think is positive only if I can expand my thinking in positive and creative ways. I try to note things in particular that could be incorporated into my writing.  In regular real life, it is not uncommon for me to let significant but fleeting thoughts pass on to wherever such neurons go to die.

Social media has done two things in these times. It has allowed us to stay connected while we are apart. It has also made such interaction seem at times a little more intrusive. Online, everybody is there.  On balance the scale tips more to the good than the bad.

I see people (poets I know that do some collaborative or group writing.  There is a part of me that is jealous, and I'm not one to see jealousy in a positive light, so I don't want to be that poet.  There are a couple of people I may touch base with and see if they would like to meet on Facetime or Skype. It's a thought.

A concern I have is for the most vulnerable of people. Person on the street.  Persons who live alone but may still get out and about. Persons who could retreat inside and succumb to the illness and have no one checking on them.  I too am concerned for those who trot off to church totally ignoring social distancing in the belief that they are safe by the blood of Jesus.  I can applaud their faith but not  their actions. God gave us a brain and I'm pretty sure he counted on us using it.

Covid-19 will be talked about, written about, and debated about for a long time. Some have suggested it to be on the scale of 9-11. I have considered this, but we have passed the deaths attributed to the Twin Towers attack. Additionally, this is international. Its impact is going to be far and wide. I could not bring myself to write a 9-11 poem for years.  I wrote a Covid-19 poem that has already been accepted.  There will be anthologies as there were for Katrina.  I'd like to see one to raise money to help in some way.  It just seems like a poet thing to do.