In the lead-up to lockdown
It was truly a mad March.
Insecurity grew
And then ran riot.
Panic took hold,
Food was stockpiled
And many shelves were bare.
There were fights in supermarket aisles
Over...toilet rolls
The new currency,
Trending on social media
With their very own hashtag.
Sales of freezers rocketed
And the food mountain in homes
Grew ever bigger.
Retailers hiked their prices
And the public were outraged,
Somehow forgetting
It was their panic
That caused the shortages
That led unscrupulous people
To take advantage of us all.
A couple of weeks went by
And then one day,
Photos went viral
Of food gone uneaten
Piled high in dustbins.
It made the people
Who had refused to panic buy
Rather angry.
For almost two months now,
People are staying home
And many streets stand empty
And silent
For much of the time.
Day after day,
NHS staff give their all
To save lives.
More than 30,000 lost
And still counting.
Millions of people without work,
Economies at a standstill.
And yet...
Against this harsh backdrop,
Some comfort has emerged
In a most surprising way.
The human senses are waking up
And taking note
Of the air in London (so clean!)
And the trees and flowers
That seem to be intensifying
Before our very eyes.
But I think
That Mother Nature
Is simply doing
What she has always done.
She is truly beautiful
It's just that amid the noise
And the hustle and bustle
Of life before lockdown,
So many had stopped noticing her,
Stopped appreciating her
And worse, had gone much further
And begun destroying her.
And now,
Without the noise
And all of the distractions,
Our eyes are opening wide
To see the trees, magnified
The flowers, so exquisite
And the beauty of buildings
Standing steady and silent.
But all of this
Was actually there all along
(Looking isn't seeing).
And so, what next for humankind?
They say that time is the great healer,
But time is also the great storyteller.
I wonder what our story will be
And what we will have learned
From all of this.
If I can dare to hope,
Then these are my hopes:
That humans will be wiser,
Kinder,
More caring
And more grateful
Because it ever there was a moment
For us to mend our ways
And stop behaving
As if this exquisite blue planet
Was ours for the taking,
That moment has arrived.
Are we ready to learn the lesson?
Blog copyright Barbara Grehs
Published on 9 May 2020
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