A Day in the Life of America in the Time of the Pandemic

The afternoon deployments of Coca-Cola semis
Depart from the truck yard in the time of pandemic.
I watch from the empty hotel parking lot as they pass:
The long, red trucks; reinforcements headed
For the front lines of the battlefields of a thirsty America
Now relegated to third class by a virus embedded in its soul.

A rare jet passes overhead, with few seats filled,
As the news says few are flying during this global ill
We, too, sit and wait for our chance to escape.
We expected to head north by the first day of Spring.
A late snow and the virus killed our plans to run away.

Life abruptly stopped.  Time lingers on
In its time-honored way,
Though much slower than yesterday
Which moved slower than the day before
And so on into the hurried past.
Why did we move so fast?
How cluttered our lives used to be.
Now we stretch with wonder.
Was all the rush just a blunder?

To pass time, I take a daily stroll outside our Days Inn door
For an intake of Vitamin D.
How barren and lonely a vacant parking lot can be.
It conjures up a ghostly air,
As the eerie hum of a gentle breeze
Whispers in my ears, the reckoning’s near.

Today’s sunlight sprays a sense of strange hope about to begin:
Something great and powerful in the quiet dawn hovers here.
       Perhaps Christ coming down in the clouds,
       yet there are no clouds today.
Should Christ appear now, it would only be in the minds of men.
The trees celebrate the cleaner air.
Birds replace the drone of planes with confident melodies.
The sky is bright, the earth is fair.

Yet in this rare dream there is also fear.
That hails the Promised Day is near.

-         C. S. Cholas
January 1, 2020 Tempe, Arizona