Art in a Time of Lockdown #1

What Next

With weather veering between searing heat

And then tempestuous gale-force winds,

An eerie sense prevails of what’s afoot,

What next are the Gods preparing for us.

Lockdown has given life more clarity,

Enabling re-connection with the Earth,

And re-acquainting us with timeless truths.

Simple, forgotten pleasures now delight.

Two hundred days of lockdown solitude,

Yield to complex and perplexing issues,

Can our old intimacies still suffice,

Or will new connections be required.

Will a primal state of anarchy prevail

And a mindless glut of pleasure-seeking,

A backlash of instinctual forces,

Amidst the bug’s triumphant spiking.

There are no precedents by which to guide

As we steer ‘tween Scylla and Charybdis,

In our hubris, we have provoked the Gods,

May our misery placate their fury.

Jean Pearson – 30.06.2020