I Cross the Street When I See You Coming

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Canadian poet, coronavirus, COVID-19, Elaine Stirling, French medieval fixed verse, social distancing, villanelle

~~a viral villanelle~~

I cross the street when I see you coming
because I care that much, I let the tears
fall freely in the bitter wind, so not to touch

my face and long for yours. What’s overcoming
us feels hobnailed, forged of amniotic fears.
I cross the street when I see you coming.

March is nearly over. We’ll be sunning
soon on balconies alone, while Easter nears.
Fall freely in the bitter wind, so not to touch

the viral jokes that, underground, are running
like dank sewer fires. This might last for years!
I cross the street when I see you coming.

Fact is, I might leave you first. Outrunning
negativity’s a marathon that sears, adheres.
Fall freely in the bitter wind, so not to touch

what aggravates. Just let it pass. Cunning
and sweet humour unseats cranky cavaliers.
I cross the street when I see you coming,
fall freely in the bitter wind, so not to touch.

Stay well, friends!

© Elaine Stirling, 2020
Image from Fox9, photographer unknown.

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Moistures & Excitements

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Canadian poet, education, Elaine Stirling, Emily Dickinson, John Donne, sonnet, Walt Whitman

unidentified boys’school Date: circa 1905 Source: postcard

True poets do not care that they are read,
the dead ones even less so for they see
the cold rigidity of young hearts bled
of spontaneity. Poor Miss McCree
with ruler tapping meter dares not share
her dreams, mad fuelled by Donne, of Principal
Trelawney. Moistures and excitements, where
are they to hide, cursed, shamed, inimical
to education’s thrust? Alas, a lass
who craves, a lad whose chemistry betrays
him, they’ll not quiver reading Leaves of Grass
but gnash on facts, bound tight like whalebone stays.
While students parse sweet Emily’s refrain,
her slanted lines dash wild against the pane.

© Elaine Stirling, 2020

The Clowns Are Staying Home Today

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Canadian poet, coronavirus, COVID-19, Elaine Stirling, isolation, medieval Spanish fixed verse, quarantine, seasonal poetry, sestina

The clowns are staying home today. The crowds
have paid their chits, the popcorn gal has learned
her bit, to shake and salt, the tent pole’s
rigged, I’ve polished all my epaulets,
but something small and mean,
gargantuan, has taken down our show.

The beast, let’s call him Ovid, starts to show
his claws and sticky coronet in crowds
whose throats just itch a bit. It doesn’t mean
a thing, the bigwigs say. Have you not learned
that crying wolf is in your head? Let’s
all stay rational. Set up the poles,

we’ll make a go of it! The poles
of left and right who love to show
how much they know will never say, let’s
get along. Conflict brings the crowds.
It’s our best selling point! We’ve learned
to milk, to squeeze the teats of mean.

As a barker, though, I do not mean
to rattle this strange circus, bring the poles
down on our heads. I haven’t learned
yet—have you?—how to navigate a no-show
of a billion tents with rumbling crowds
who’ve nowhere left to go. Let’s

sit with this a while, please. She who lets
the river calmly pass respects the mean
whose curve now shapes the crowds.
Our global weight is snapping poles
in two, four, six, eight. A primal show
is playing to us all, the simple and the learned.

Oh, the things we will have learned
when Gargantua has shat his last! Let’s
not forget who rules the inner show:
the human spirit, heart, who mean—
and ultimately do—well. Set up the poles,
sweet clowns. We’re expecting great crowds!

Author’s Note: This is a sestina, a medieval Spanish poetic form that uses a spiraling repetition of six end words to bring the reader through a vortex, and hopefully a new state of mind by the end.

May we all rise above this soon, and thrive!

© Elaine Stirling, 2020
The image comes from a 2014 blog entitled “Porque ríes, payaso?” Why do you laugh, clown? I don’t know the artist or the blogger’s name.

Viral Ides

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Canadian poet, coronavirus, COVID-19, Elaine Stirling, Ides of March, seasonal poetry, sonnet

Ides, strange ides today, we crowd as one, bugged,
we march in step, in place, nowhere to go,
can’t cross the seas, a need to be unplugged
and yet to know, I fear the sneeze, the blow.
How many weeks, you say, before the weak
can self-identify? How far is wise,
for when I think of you and thoughts turn bleak,
have I not compromised my own demise?
Immunity’s a pitchy thing, a shade
that darts, a ninja one cannot deploy
mid-storm, and yet, might there not be some made
and ready balm inside me to enjoy?
May sweet simplicity befriend us through
these weeks we learn to be instead of do.

© Elaine Stirling, 2020

Sending wishes of good health to all!

A Sonnet for Sir Terry

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Canadian poet, coronavirus, Discworld, Elaine Stirling, homage to Terry Pratchett, Sir Terry Pratchett, sonnet

What, oh what, would you make of us today
satirically, Sir Terry, this spinning
disc of whirling thoughts? Do you grandly play
among the stars or do you creep, grinning,
with the spectre we fear so much to touch?
All this advice, inadvertent adverts
very soon will not amount to much, such
fun to elbow bump, though grumps still pervert
at every mimsy turn the joys of life.
Four pachyderms atop a turtle shell.
As science, faith, and politics suffice
to stir the worst and best, I cannot tell
nor must I, thankfully, explain the WHO,
the what or whyfor. Sans wi-fi will do.

Stay healthy, friends!

Image creator unknown: Happy to attribute if anyone could help out.