Quarantine

| 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.

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