A Poem During a Modern Plague

Every morning upon rising Routinely searching my vital signs As a poverty stricken person Searches pockets for spare change. The grim news reports, The skyrocketing death tolls, Mausoleums more populated Than the emptied churches, Many desperately seeking God From the confines of their dwellings. I remember the time, early in life, When I use to peer from my window Into the darkness outside For the headless Dullahan at the reins Of the Cóiste Bodhar (coach-a-bower), Its four black black horses Powerfully pulling the death coach Up to my front door, as I ruminate On the words of Yeats, casting A cold eye on life, on death. Life, death, such separate entities, Or so it seems, on the surface. Yet, forty-two years of lessons By grieving families have only Taught me the oneing of life, of death. As the beloved Anchoress of Norwich Gazed out the window of her cell Upon her nation devastated by The Black Death and war, So I gaze out my window on a world As broken by plague and political violence, And am comforted by the word of Christ To this simple Middle Age mystic, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, And all manner of thing shall be well.” (c) 2020, Robert Charles Wagner.