Pandemic, Poetry And Peace

By Ishmeet Kaur Chaudhry

https://youtu.be/rVyTXcjbUbw

I live in the times

when pandemic took over

we were locked inside

damn scared of the virus- it is a kind of bio-war

The world was under a lockdown

no deliveries, nor newspapers

no vendors, nor vegetables for days

no guests nor any relatives visited

We checked the rising numbers

of the Covid infections every hour online

the number of deaths and

the numbers in areas closer to us or to our relatives

We were cheated

with useless apps

with forged numbers and manipulated figures

with hollow assurances and lies

Then we took to reading and scribbling

…many took to cooking

I took to poetry

reading and writing

Unseen images and metaphors

were drawn with words

unwieldy comparisons

of loneliness and isolation

Compared my isolation

to that of a lizard

wandering aimlessly on the walls

all alone…day in and day out

My loneliness to that

huge Bargad tree at the cross-roads

Municipal Corporation could not cut it,

stands right in the centre of the road

Those with night-blindness are at a risk

of crashing straight in its pot-bellied huge trunk

but… it stands confident, tall and wide

though lonely in the middle of a busy road

My pen and the poems

the images and the metaphors

calmed my nerves, my arm

my mind, my body

When I see that pen now

lying idle on the table

the very sight has an aura of positivity

of peace flowing through every poem it nibbed.

By Ishmeet Kaur Chaudhry