David C. Brydges

Cobalt Ontario Canada

David C. Brydges is a cultural historian, and community builder. He is artistic director of Spring Pulse Poetry Festival in Northern Ontario Canada. Memberships include branch manager Ontario Poetry Society, and League of Canadian Poets. David has three chapbooks published and one full length book “Vagabond Post Office.”

Poem Written 10th April 2020

We Are All Connected  

“We are like islands in the sea,

separate on the surface

but connected in the deep.” ― William James

The world body is a house of horrors,

as uninvited germ guests have arrived,

via pancontinental travel transmissions.

Walls of false security exposes uncertainty,

plagues tense question of what is next.

Fear a vice grip pressures our breath.

Histories wise eye does not blink.

Confined to stay at home cells, for the “Public Pause.”

Ann Frank’s ghost counterbalances any discomfort.

Complain no eggs at the supermarket, recall Bosnian

soldiers’ story imprisoned nine months on a hillside.

Honour heroic frontline workers grim shifts.

Disturbed if N95 masks, gloves, face shields,

protective gowns enough to avoid infection.

Praise all workers keeping us semi-functional.

Heartened and saddened by double TV news

102-year-old Italian woman survivor of 1918

Spanish flu recovered from the COVID-19 virus.

Julie, a sixteen-year-old girl near Paris, doesn’t.

Striking without morality equal in ferocity,

from princesses’ politicians, priests’ atheists,

doctors’ nurses, police officers’ prisoners,

seniours and one-year-old infant in Chicago.

Isolated ICU ventilator records last gasp.

Funerals a solitary desert of cactus tears.

Death bells are ringing everywhere.

I oscillate between despair and delight,

then see green buds after brother prunes

seven shamrock kitchen windowsill plants.

A day later one clover and fresh shoots  

head straight for sunlight, as nature deeply

works its deified grace of regeneration.

Am delighted life will triumph because we

are always connected to a radiant resilience

no shadows of suffering can ever extinguish.

I