30/30: Golden Shovel #4

I hunger for change despite

the warnings that no vaccines

can halt the shape-shifting

creatures we become of

fog and smoke, failing to see the virus

of hate and fear that imperils

our connections to each one of us, a

sign that to return

is going backwards, not to

a future new rather than normal.

 

This news story reports that while we have vaccines, the mutations cropping up makes any return to life in the before-times still elusive.

 

Here is how I am using Terrance Hayes’s Golden Shovel poem format, as proposed by the Sunday New York Times "At Home" section, for 30 Poems in 30 Days during National Poetry Month.

 

Take a newspaper headline that attracts you.

Use each word in the line as the end word for each line in your poem.

Keep the end words in order.

Describe the story that the headline is for.

The poem does not have to be about the same subject as the headline that creates the end words.