Written on 8th July 2021
JOE
I hear you’re looking for Joe.
He’s not what he was, you know.
They took him away in the night.
He won’t get any worse – but he might.
All you can do is hope and pray,
for miracles do happen, they say.
But you know Joe, he never did God,
always found it all a bit odd.
‘So who made the virus?’ he’d sometimes ask.
You can’t see God’s face. He’s wearing a mask.
He’s not said a word since the ICU.
They said they’d let me know of anything new.
So here I sit; I sit by the phone.
I wait for the call he’s on his way home.
I wait; I watch the clock on the wall.
I watch the light die; and darkness fall.
I hear you’re looking for Joe.
He’s not what he was, you know.
THOUGHTS ON CORONAVIRUS
Bacteria, they say, are alive. Coronavirus, they say, is alive and, yet, not alive. Its only purpose on this Earth is to replicate itself as fast as it can. It’s so small it almost isn’t there. And, yet, it’s there. It’s everywhere. It’s very minuteness is it’s strength. It manifests a fierce impulse to survive. And to survive, it kills.
Yet it doesn’t know it kills. It doesn’t know, it doesn’t know. It doesn’t know, it doesn’t know, it doesn’t know. Deep down, deep inside our body cells, it wages sub-atomic warfare; it’s murderous motivation unfathomable. A million more – it doesn’t care. It doesn’t care, it doesn’t care. It doesn’t care, it doesn’t care, it doesn’t care.
Stuart McFarlane is now semi-retired. He taught English for many years to asylum seekers in London. He has had poems published in a few online journals.
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