This is my Ode to CO-VID
A rap
A non-rhyme of a time—
for the absurd
A bird—a black swan no less for us hu-mans.
It’s a slap from his-story, from vi-ri-ol-ogy
From pa-le-en-tol-o-gy
With fossils-of-learnings-of-warnings dusted from our past.
Lest
We
Forget.
It’s the time of the scien-tist
the phar-ma-cist
the e-pi-de-me-ol-o-gist.
BC, what did we know of statistics
of ‘r’ rates, of cumulation, attrition and coupling of death rates?
But now we’ve all done our own research, read the peer-reviewed double-blind control-group Lancet published re-view.
I -don’t-think-so.
This is an ode to a time of reflection
of men-tal health R-U-OK mates.
Of kids on bikes looking for jumps and making huge humps next to roads
golf courses
aged care res-i-den-cies.
Of everyday sights of more kids on bikes with spades coordinating raids on council-patrolled glades to create huge mounds to
en-ter-tain
and be knocked down and rebuilt again.
This is an ode to quiet-ness and idle-ness
—of two cars garaged, plane-less skies and the rise of that bird—again, its black wings fanning away our
dis-trac-tions
our thwarted va-ca-tions
this-is-it.
our little black swan
Arma-ged-don.
This is an ode to the rise of the cat, of the dog of all family pets
to the sour dough bread so cherished and now dead
like sport and rushing, and traffic and public coughing.
This is an ode to the clock of the daily Presser.
And the weekend Northface announcing the first ever Delta case.
This is an ode to the triumph of active wear our elastic-waisted waist-down weekday, weekend, sleeping sporting attire.
A time of weird Zoom looking-in at your kitchen mire,
your bed, your kids, your door bell deliveries invading my head.
Right
back
at
you.
This is an ode to my favourite Swan, the Norman Swan
raging his own war on misinformation and the fact poor
storming the gulf of those with medical degrees and the rest with access to Facebook decrees
—yep, COVID-19 is really caused by 5G.
This is an ode to just one ex-per-i-ence
of a pendulum of moods—dark-ness to grate-ful-ness
Of the roller-coaster of numbers
the avalanche of statistics organising our lives.
This is an ode to the strive for the
Pos-i-tive
The
Mind-ful-ness
the dolphins and the moodiness.
This is my ode to CO-VID.
Kyra-Bae Snell’s writing spans poetry, rap and non-fiction. She loves writing as part of a collaboration and was part of the team to contribute to the award-winning community history: From Inkwell to Internet.
