Quarantine
MedCurious Submissions | May 10, 2020
Headlines today:
PANDEMIC! UNHEARD! UNSEEN!
A NEW WORLD ORDER
TO BE SPENT IN QUARANTINE.
The tears, the fears, the lost careers,
A new crisis, we must shift the gears
Into a life less ordinary.
A life of less – that’s for sure.
It all seems ugly,
It lacks Grace,
And it lacks the pace of that race
That I know I can control.
I cannot comprehend this new ordinary.
Ordinarily I could embrace the odd day off,
A day to take stock,
A day to reset the clock
And knock on the doorways of my life
That I haven’t really visited recently.
Or I could just watch Netflix.
But this is not ordinary.
I must drag my feet and take my seat
In the solitary throne of my castle
Where I am visited by the ghosts and tweets
Of fears and tears and lost careers,
Of those who claim to live ‘unseen’
In this new world order
We call quarantine.
It is a new world ordinary I cannot comprehend.
Or rather…
Perhaps…
Perhaps I never could comprehend the ‘ordinary’?
It was unheard, it was unseen
Hidden by the spectre
Of tears and fears of bunk careers
And drowned out by incessant turning gears.
Did I ever see or hear an ordinary day?
Did I ever control the race,
Or was it Grace who always set the pace
Of a life I once called ordinary?
Maybe I can comprehend it all…
This…. ‘Thing’
Between the Games of Thrones and Tiger Kings…
Maybe…. Just maybe….
There’s only so much Netflix I can enjoy.
It’s hard to embrace this slow time off,
This time to reset the clock
To take a key and unlock
The doorways of my life I haven’t visited recently.
I now must get off my seat
And carry my feet
Around the inner moat of my lonely castle.
By now I have opened the online gates
And by the chance of fate
Have transformed my castle into a fortress of the all the greats….
(My friends and family; of course)
Physically far, spiritually close
Connected to all,
I raise this toast.
The struggle is real,
Endure the dream,
To the other side
Of Quarantine!
Submitted by
Dr Rory Plant
Rory is a Medical Senior House Officer training in HSE South network. He previously studied Law and Political Science and is interested in the experiential aspects of medicine, from the perspectives of patients and healthcare workers. He wrote this poem while reflecting about life in lockdown.