This poem should be read as the poetic companion piece to my essay Covid-19: Agent of Change, which I posted last week. I haven’t wrote a new poem for ages. I expect on finishing my MA I will write poetry enthusiastically, I still think in it at least, I just don’t stop, as I inveterately did before my MA, to jot down what abracadabras from a visual: idea: implausibility: discombobulation: event… I really hope everyone is coping under these peculiar, trying circumstances. I recently spoke with the poet Tim Miller, who mentioned in his email that writers & poets were feeling a sense of guilt about writing under Covid-circumstances. I agree with him that now, as much as any other time, is a ripe time to be writing. This whole episode needs documenting in as interdisciplinary a form as possible. Let’s make a hyperobject of our response to these hyperobject-circumstances.

Crown of Air
 
Like photons hurtled unabated from the crown of the sky
this virus shaped like blotches of rain
on glass, or lotus breaking soft filmed ponds,
perforating our bodies, finding entrances, ailing us.
Our response-ability reliant on health. It comes from the air.
The wind we hasp to in the sweep of leaves.
The habitude of touch, our propinquities each day,
clobbered into reflection: the peck on the cheek;
the temperature of a hug scaled back
like the pollutants casually, business-as-usual,
which clamber the arms of photons concatenate to godhead
—smutting the ceiling of the sky with conveniences.
Spaces have been locked-down. We are in uncanny territory.
We will find out why we laugh when we do
& why we cry & are fearful, when we are.
 
We have plenty to think about…
 
We must not grow, in this drawn out,
fragment-unfurling-history, too far from one another.
We can call each other’s names from our windows & desks. 
The rhizomal virus, even while it parts us,
creates an interlocking-care, of love incalculable.
We are vowels in a diphthong, you & I.
I want to see you in real time. I want to lie
on your floor, with warm in my skin & bones.
I want your smile, your fleshy lips, your love...eyes!
I want time itself to feel love & sunlight.
History will be kind, torqued in our anecdotes.
There is nothing to dissemble us, no
roborant sickness to steady away copula of heart
& heart, one person, their neighbor, a stranger
: love is a virus too.