To explain the story while also being in the story
Is not easy.
Like when in meditation
The instruction is to observe the observer,
Or walking through a hall of mirrors
Scrambles the brain.
It doesn't feel like much of a story
Mine
Drifting through quiet days
With the sea crackling and clapping
While we sleep deeply
And eat well
Spend idle hours discussing The Situation
With friends and family across the world
Enjoy this permission to indulge every whim
But one.
Laugh at jokes networking our connecting threads
Lose ourselves in a good book
Push down the glimpses
Which flash, uninvited
Of the Wider Picture
To grip the heart with fear and dread.
Nobody knows where this story is going
Though many try to predict
As we do our daily fitness programs
And imagine we are preparing
For the challenges ahead
This is the stuff of science fiction
We have stepped into someone else's
Apocalyptic dream.
There must be some mistake.
I've had enough now
Of this particular scene.
I'd like to be a hero
But all I can do
Is eat plenty of vitamin C
And check that my mother is O.K.
While doctors and nurses
Are dying with the dying
And we all clap on our balconies
Keeping safe and swallowing our grief
For the world we once knew
And the people who have gone
And the security we once took for granted.
We do not shed tears
For we are learning, like our Grandparents did
To keep a stiff upper lip
In times of such adversity.
We will beat the invisible enemy
With humour and positivity
The only defence most of us have.
This could be the Beginning of the End for mankind
Or just a blip in our history
Like the Great Depression or the Great War.
But being in the story
Means we cannot know
And living with such uncertainty
Is new and difficult for some of us.
We are, with refugees and cancer patients,
Learning at a new level
The truth of our mortality.