Viral Atmosphere
A poem for Anita
Don’t forget to write, she said,
worried about my depression —
about my losses accumulating too fast
to find relief in the midst of — this.
Working too much, too hard, to grieve for two years,
relief nowhere in sight in this viral atmosphere —
stay-at-home orders have loopholes
for all my clients and everything I do —
I must continue but not as before,
now I must remote-work
which should be so easy in 2020
but it feels more like 1998 —
multiple trips to offices we are to avoid
to get and deliver the work we are to do somewhere else
other than the office where the work must be done.
Our business worlds not fashioned for this new reality
of stay away, stay home, but work, work, work —
the stress of home-working more than
the stress of working in a place of possible contamination.
So how do we choose,
how do we weigh our work with our health
and why should we, why must we?
