Tuesday, April 28, 2020

More idle thoughts in the Time of Lockdown

This blog site is generally about subjects like genetics, disease, science, and our attempts to understand the complexity of Nature.  But, obviously, those of us not involved in the science to combat the corona virus, have are other things on our minds. For some--perhaps many or even most--it is the very idea of survival, the fear that "the virus could take me down, too!"

Under these conditions, we've not been thinking about science, but about distraction, esthetics, musings on Nature and so on.  In that spirit we offer this verse.  It's about the small mountain adjacent to our new home with, that has a roughly road up to the top, where there are an observation tower and picnic tables.  It's a road we regularly walk for exercize....and for something other than the virus to think about.

Mounting Sugarloaf
In strolling up Mount Sugarloaf
One travels tors of old,
A venerable pile of rock
That in the stone reflects
A past both slow and bold

There were no human witnesses
On hand to note the course
That slowly built the hillsides up,
As layers rose and bent
With geologic force

With shaking seismic happenings
Its greatest shape was gained,
First lifting up and taking form;
But then as years wore by,
Eroding when it rained
                                         
And now can we, when walking there
And witnessing what stays,
Of taller peaks and sharper crags
That humbler have been made,
Imagine ancient days!

Monday, April 27, 2020

I'd take a walk


Taking a walk
I’d take a walk to get away
And for corona be not prey
But if it’s lurking everywhere
Then strolling can’t escape its lair
Each step may draw me close to doom
So, I’ll just hunker in my room!

More poetic thoughts for these awful times.....

These are lock-down times for us all, and for most of us they are essentially unprecedented.  We, or at least I, sit at home, gazing out the window wishing for normalcy.  Would you agree with me, that we are in a time to contemplate the meaning of things, the things that really have meaning?  And, in the absence of other ways that seems even nearly suitable, I try to write my thoughts in verse.  Whether anybody else will think that's appropriate, at least here are examples that seem apt to me.


Gravely, gravely
Gravely, gravely came the news
Of viral pestilential blues
Whence deaths and disabilities
Were nearly universal woes
The toll too great to read the roll
The land beset with sighs and cries

The toll, the toll--we scan the rolls
Of names that once were lively souls
The list grew daily as did sighs
For those who’ll ne’er again give smiles
A roll too long to be all told
Oh, land beset with sighs and cries!

Some day, some day, will names be few
Of deaths that pile, by ones and twos
To add to graves from yesterday:
Then, fertilizing fields of grass
Producing flowers and fragrant dews
Graves once beset by sighs and cries



As the Tombstones Wear Away
(From a walk in an old Massachusetts graveyard)

From tombstones in the graveyard, our history wears away;
Weath’ring very slowly, yet eroding day by day:
Of children falling ere they played, inscribed are many named;
They had brief lives, then passed away, so soon, and ne’er were famed.
Of others passing in decline are memories waning, too,
As tombstoned records of their days are slowly eaten through:
Ah! and since our Earth itself’s a slowly aging ball,
The time will come when no one’s memory exists at all.


Saturday, April 25, 2020

Drink Your Clorox!
Drink your Clorox while you can,
UV your innards ‘til they tan
Since soon you will be sure to hear
The spoil-sports telling you to fear:
Advice from higher-ups to shun,
The President’s will leave you stunned!
But no! Since as you conk you're rid
Of need to fear the bad Covid
So, drink your Clorox now, before
The groceries will have no more!

Thursday, April 23, 2020

This corona is not a beer, and hard to bear!

Corona Quakes
As our earth shakes
In viral trembling
Pandemic makes
Us fear assembling

Yet let’s insist
Without distorting:
We must persist
In not cavorting!

Keeping distance--
Yards spaced apart
Gives resistance:
Advice that’s smart

That bugs unseen
Could cause such terror:
A fear so keen
Of each mask wearer!

Yet this will pass
As do they all
The end at last--
A passing pall! 

But let it not
From memory fade
Lest we repeat
This grim parade!

Saturday, April 4, 2020

The plague of our times.....

What can one do when hunkered down in a plague, something we've not really seen in any of our lifetimes, at least in the wealthier part of the world?  One is to try to express in some way other than dry prose or statistics, what one is thinking.  In that spirit here are a couple of verses, written in the expanse of spare time that we while away, to keep us from worrying too much in these times of plague:


Corona Masking
If all of us would wear a mask
Which, we’ve been shown’s a simple task,
Then none of us would be a loner
While all are safer from corona

A mask like that’s a snap to make
A sane precaution all should take:
With scarf, bandana, or worn-out Tee
I won’t harm you, and you not me!


A Grey Corona Day
I sit here on a grisly day, the clammy wintry kind,
When snow blows cheerfulness into a grisly pall;
A virus called ‘corona’ seems lurking all around,
And causing eerie symptoms, of any kind at all

We can’t be sure how deadly this bug might really be
In most it passes quickly, with sniffles and that’s it
But some, the ill or elderly, are made to fear they’ll see
A fever, cough, or breathing lapse, their final earthly fit

So, while they say that many won’t know they’re sick at all--
A headache it may be, or touch of wat’ry eye,
It only takes a cough to make one’s spirits fall
Since if for some it may be nothing, for others they will die!

To find uplifting thoughts is what we need to do:
To laugh, to smile, or tell a humorous tale,
Recite a verse, perhaps, or maybe even two,
And if also adding music--improvement will prevail!