by Nemo
This War started innocently enough
(as all wars do in the history books)
It’s wild bat soup!
Of course we all laughed
WE are a civilized nation after all
We had other battles to watch at first:
Sanders vs Warren, Biden vs Bloomberg
Who really would protect Roe v. Wade?
We had little time or interest to care
about some place we called “Woo-Han”
But then it started making the grade….
CNN and all the others told us what to think
And as it progressed, they even told us
what to feel and how to act and even
how much toilet paper to buy
Nightly we watched the score board…..
What is up with Italy and Spain?,
we asked ourselves smugly.
We told ourselves over and over again,
the flu kills more Americans every year
We like fighting wars,
especially on others’ soil
WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam
And all those oil filled places
too numerous to count
But we don’t like it so well
when it comes to our shores
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”
But keep your dirty germs to yourself
So we watched, we waited, and the numbers climbed:
Washington, Cali, then NY ….oh NY!
You poor poster child of misery!
Wasn’t 911 enough?
No, I guess not
Sure, it gave us the Patriot Act,
to be followed by the Freedom Act
Slippery slides towards loss of freedoms
But hey! … don’t you feel safer?
And the stock market is doing great!
Now we see, that a War on Terror
was just the start
We have a new war now
A little virus, so small
that you can’t see it at all
And they say:
“Stay Inside”
“Keep 6 feet apart”
“Flatten the Curve”
All these little catch phrases,
written for the scared child inside
So we wear our mask and gloves
Don’t look each other in the eye
and let Fear keep us company
while Netflix sedates our minds
But Fear is a jealous lover
Today I saw a wooden stand
in a neighbors yard
They were giving away free jam – homemade
Others had dropped off canned goods
trying to help in some small way
Little acts of kindness
Little manufactured viruses
Little do we really know
that the virus is not our enemy
Our enemy in this war is the fear we feel
Our enemy is fearing loss
Our enemy is fearing less
Our enemy is all the little ways
that things are stripped from us
But we don’t have to let it be that way
We can go inside and see what’s there,
acknowledge the fear and let it slip away
We can hold a hand, laugh a laugh
and remember that we are still human
And not let that too be stripped away.