What Paradise Have We Lost?

The boy picked up a dandelion
Carefree as was his wont
But when it came to blowing it out
He was stymied by the face mask
No matter how hard that he huffed and he puffed
The fabric mesh that covered his mouth held fast

The mask against aerosols and other viral vectors
Did its duty of protection against childhood leisure
Thus whimsy was victimized by material culture
Revealing the extent of the plague's infrastructure
We were getting a truer measure of the pandemic's cost
Even as we asked, what paradise have we lost?

...

We passed our neighbor on our daily walk
But where we would usually stop and talk
We contented ourselves with a head nod and gave her a wide berth
Such are the rituals that are disappearing from this earth
Now alienation becomes common courtesy and a duty of care
The temporarary inconvenience of distancing as social welfare

That the breath of life carries tainted droplets is another irony
Anecdotal testimony abounds of the myriad covidious casualties
Biology imposes penalties and we weigh its shadow's burden
Deprived of touch and community, so many are truly hurting
This new normalcy, fraught and enforced, only exhausts
We are left pondering, what paradise have we lost?

Paradise Lost, a playlist

An upbeat soundtrack for this note, a tour of a world forlorn. (spotify version)

• Paradise by Sade
• Pastime Paradise by Stevie Wonder
• Fool's Paradise by Melisa Morgan
• Paradise Circus by Massive Attack
• The Sloganeer - Paradise by Meshell NdegeOcello

This internal displacement is part of a series: In a covidious time.

File under: life, coronavirus, pandemic, culture, observation, perception, loss, change, youth, tradition, social, communities, isolation, covidious, poetry, Small Things, toli

Writing log: March 13, 2021