Tuesday, November 10, 2020

a witness

 

lockdown  (pause)

the everyday normal


our house, room, walls

is the office & theatre & sports bar


& gym & school & library (& everything else)-

wired & plugged & zoomed


virtual doctor appointments & weddings 

& funerals (& everything else)-


we follow rules under pandemic times

wearing mask was initially a strange abnormality


like fishy, false news, but graph data of rising cases

don't lie


as in votes count in election results

don't lie


i delete

(covididiots marching last weekend) & read

with hope vaccine development news


How to Pronounce Knife

won our 2020 Giller Prize for short stories


i practice on my readings,

rounding my voice to bellowing bells


applause, applause (pause)-

my mind reels back to short dayhours


as yellowing of maple leaves mark

the season change


we (pause)

winter for few days of sun-


shine, spring of birdsongs, magic of colors

blanketing our city up north



20 C in Mississauga City, Nov. 10, 2020


Posted for dVerse Poets Pub - Poetics, Poetry as Witness, hosted by Peter Frankis.

We are enjoying a (rare) warm autumn week.   Thanks for the visit and comments.





18 comments:

  1. It's amazing how little that really happens outside what we read... the numbers that we read.

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  2. Lovely piece Grace - all these stories and the (pause) - says so much - how we are paused (not stopped), how we respond - what we delete/save/celebrate - I so liked the last where winter too is paused. Applause.

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  3. I like the way your focus shifts from lockdown, its restrictions and new normal, to news that finds it way in via the Internet, newspapers, TV and radio. I love the brief glimpse of autumn (just like autumn itself – it came and went so quickly) in the lines:
    ‘as yellowing of maple leaves mark
    the season change
    we (pause)
    winter for few days of sun’.

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  4. Life is beyond crazy, is it not? You encapsulate it well in the beauty of this poem.

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  5. Love this especially; "i practice on my readings,
    rounding my voice to bellowing bells applause, applause (pause)-my mind reels back to short dayhours as yellowing of maple leaves mark the season change. Wonderfully deep and evocative write!💝💝

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  6. very grounding images and thoughts, Grace. I like your two examples at opposite ends of the social spectrum. I see it isn't just USA that has groups of covidiots, who will now take their spread germs back home to push the #of cases (and deaths) up

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  7. Attempting to keep our lives as normal as possible is a challenge, but the warm week of Indian Summer was such a welcome blessing!

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  8. Pause to enjoy the final days of fall...your yellowing maples are gorgeous! We have inches of snow today.

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  9. A clean cut dissection of the year ending in brightness. I love the image of golden leaves and the new-found optimism.

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  10. That's the second time my comment has disappeared! Strange!
    Your words echo Kim's though in a different setting. We have shrunk, but the world turns and does what it has to whether we participate or not.

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  11. This is the time when we witness both self-sacrifice and stupidity all rolled into the same wrap... the wrap of Covid-19. We will never be the same. Common sense should rule the day!

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  12. This is magical Grace, and big enough to gently embrace our times. Excellent, :)

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  13. The little details are what tell the story

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  14. From "as yellowing of maple leaves..." onward just calms me - thank you for that image

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  15. You've nailed the lockdown....our living spaces dismembered so to speak. The repetition of "don't lie" is so right on in terms of news in the US. Well done....witness indeed.

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  16. The (pause) button hit intermittently just accentuates the lengthy lockdown. Brilliantly done.

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