Our Watershed

A cloven nation watches it all

The Circus Act infecting the Red, as well as Blue dominions.

Incompetence identifies no state boundaries

And science deniers are hushed by the “Invisible Enemy”’s vigil.

We thought we had seen it all

Nothing could shock us into further dismay.

But a tiny strand of RNA from the nucleolus trumps the bigotry and the boasting

Levels the turf for those who would look down on “the Other”.

The misinformation compounds the death, the agony

While the confusion of our newfound normal brings the world to its knees.

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Do we need more proof that we are all the same

Human, fallible, exposed and alone, unless we connect?

Scientists become our most heralded shepherds

Proffering the only egress from the hellhole that is this novel contagion.

Will we restructure our priorities

To defend the natural world, and one another?

Or will we allow churlish political charlatans

To stubbornly drag us into enabling the madness through our inaction?

To re-evaluate, reboot and rescue

Ourselves from ourselves, is a challenge which makes Covid seem tame.

Our only optimism gurgles weakly through tiny cracks in the floodgates

Which mulishly restrain the cool clean waters in our dormant watershed of reason.