The Known Unknown
A Pandemic Poem
It’s hard to understand a global pandemic
when you don’t trust anything on the news
and certainly not something that is trending
You think it’s all overblown until it’s not
or until someone coughs in your presence
even though they just have a tickle in their throat
You now look at them like Outbreak patient #1
because our modern society does not know
how to act and react to real things in our world
It’s all about how it looks and containment
of facts, instead of virus, as we all become
flummoxed with the dichotomy between
seemingly correct graphs and charts
and hyperbole and misshapen docudrama
causing widespread hysteria
Maybe we’ve watched too many
end of the world television shows
and read too many world-destruction books
or maybe we are all too cavalier
buying a bunch of drinks to sock our time away
instead of working on a plan that will keep us safe
but also connected to the ones we love
And isn’t that what matters now?
Whether this is underreported or overblown,
those that are close to us and keeping…
