Splendid Isolation 2 by Sandra Falconer

The brilliant Sandra from our monthly digital storytelling class is keeping a poetic journal during lockdown – here’s the second installment!

Splendid Isolation 2

We expected it to last a lifetime  – that first week
How quickly did it pass!
No alarms, no arguments over breakfast
No school bus that refused to wait for the tardy
No school! (oh dear!)
Just 3 generations bumping along happily together
Ingredients gathered for  meals that taste of  care
We converse again, We craft together
We take time to check on people we don’t see so much
Cocooned from the  awful reality
Life has become quite pleasant

But every situation contains within itself. (said a great philosopher)
The seeds of its own destruction
The daily struggle to home school a reluctant teen
Jars our newfound harmony
While the miminutiae of our lives assumes unmerited significance
As we pour lavish praise
On that  perfectly presented scrambled egg
We have stopped watching the contradictions served up as news
We reject the pallid offerings of 300+ TV channels
And the cat disrupts the daily workout
The fuse becomes a little shorter by the day

Yet these are surface irritations.
As the death toll mounts
We search for ways to justify the air we breathe
And the sacrifices made for us
By each and every front line worker
Suddenly the Thursday night applause is not enough
Then  we see the fallout of this catastrophe
On people already blighted
By poverty war and displacement
Guilt and gratitude stand tall
In equal measure

As the third week begins Isolation seems a little less splendid
We are more humble, more grateful
More willing to be part of the solution
Not just to the  crisis of the day
But in the mess we have  made of this world.
The leaders we complain about so vehemently
Won their positions
By appealing to our baser instincts.
As we despoil the oceans with the dregs
Of our glossily packaged lives
We become aware that every need we ignore, each wasted resource
Adds another crack to this world

So perhaps begins a more philosophical mood
Who knows what the next week will bring
The situation changes daily
As will we!