Quarantined in my Quarter of the World
by Edna Garcia
While in quarantine,
Enduring the excruciating effects of COVID-19,
The headaches, throat soreness, nausea, vomiting,
Diarrhea, and dysphoria,
I am deteriorating from desolation
Due to the isolation from those I love.
Lost in illness, my tired eyes turn to the media
For curative information on TV and social networking.
Besides seeing disheartening reports about freezer trailers
Filled with formerly flowering lives,
There are other reports on people not getting a chance
To tell friends and family members farewell,
Reports of a hellish system that failed the aged,
Reports of rapid infections,
Reports about dissatisfaction with social distancing,
And reports of political division.
By the time my mind processes all those reports,
I am grateful about seeing stories of bravery from doctors,
Nurses, first responders, service workers,
The heroism of neighbors nursing neighbors in need,
And above all, I am overjoyed over each opine
Showing hope for the blood in COVID-19 survivors.
Here, quarantined in my quarter of the world,
I offer them this ode
Dedicated to all who are doing something
To end our undoing.
Valle de Collores
When I left Collores
it was in a faded little donkey,
by a path between fences
enveloped by flower vines.
Goodbye wilderness and flowers
of the ravine by the river,
and the nights of my thatched hut,
and the peaceful calm,
and the old folks of my soul,
and my little siblings.What grief, the one I felt
when I looked back,
and a house was being left in the distance,
and that house happened to be mine!
The very last time I turned my eye,
I saw the white flight
of that maternal handkerchief
soaked in the juice of pain.
Further beyond, smoke
disappearing in the sky.The rural flora
was sad, opaque, wilted.
And everything, like anguish,
gripped my heart.
The donkey, to his discretion,
moved at a lazy pace.
The wind blew, aromatic
of honeysuckle and pine,
and the banyans along the way
resembled weeping willows.I don’t remember how it was
(here I lose my memory).
Yet in my golden memories,
I remember that finally I arrived,
the city, the theater, the cafe,
the square, the park, the sidewalk,
and in a bewitching bride,
I found the burning branch,
where I hung the first nest
of my first chimera.Later, in the pursuit of ideals,
then, wounded by envy,
and the slander and the insidiousness,
and the hatred of mortals,
and plotting triumphal dreams,
I saw the white flight again
of that maternal handkerchief
soaked with the juice of pain.
The rest, smoke
fading into the sky.Oh, glory is but a vain dream,
and pleasure, all but wind,
and richness, torment,
and power, a coarse worm.
Oh, if it was in my hands
to erase my major triumphs,
and to my thatched hut in Collores
return in that faded donkey
by the path between the fences
enveloped by flower vines.