Did We Need a Virus?

This poem is written during the onslaught of the Coronavirus.  Keep safe everyone.

 

Virus?  Why us?  Where’s you, O God?

Dead scared, many of us, isoloitering?

Play paused, work halted, touch faulted;

Governments stuttering, cities shuttering.

 

Did we need a virus to know we’re social?

 

Churches locked, congregations shocked.

Gyms shut and online exercises abound.

Keep two metres, and the sky’s the limit?

Flights out as we keep our feet on the ground.

 

Did we need a virus to enjoy our locale?

 

Covid-19 – sounds like a space mission,

Yet this terror is air borne, earth bound.

Scientific progress – where are you now?

Did arms race come before a cure found?

 

Did we need a virus to value health care?

 

Are animals wondering just what’s up…

Humans seem to be losing their iron grip?

“Earth-born companion and fellow-mortal!”

Hedgehogs maybe surviving a tarmac trip?

 

Did we need a virus to treasure our world?

 

Pollution counts are everywhere reduced,

Industry divided into essential and… what?

Yet many depend on leisure and sports;

Life unhinged by a nasty, deadly, microdot.

 

Did we need a virus to breathe fresh air?

 

Trump, Bolsonaro, Xi Jinping, who cares?

Yet life continues as surely as spam emails.

National borders are seen for what they are:

False walls erected as global friendship fails.

 

Did we need a virus to really own our kin?

 

Were we perhaps slumbering like sloths,

Heedless of our precious planet’s need?

Our only home on which we’re all perched,

While the few plunder in blatant greed?

 

Did we need a virus to see our scarce cake?

 

Though we mourn many untimely deaths,

And hail the selfless brave caring teams,

Will we learn from this pandemic’s horror,

That life’s far more precious than it seems?

 

Did we need a virus?  Did we really?

 

From such darkness, lessons may yet be drawn.

The rampant contagion of damn coronavirus,

Is more than matched by how kindness spreads:

Each one’s love ripples outwards to all of us.

 

Did we need a virus?  We surely shouldn’t have.