\nIt’ll all blow over, don’t worry, some said
\nBut the hospitals were full, there was nary a bed
\nAnd the TV showed sidewalks with hearses, and the dead
\nWaiting to be buried. <\/p>\n
Communities had barricaded themselves in
\nAll deliveries were dropped off to be collected later
\nAll stores shut down and their owners fled
\nTo the countryside where it was said
\nThe virus couldn’t survive.<\/p>\n
With its hundred apartments, our own community,
\nLocked the two sets of gates, which we’d never seen done.
\nPeople worked from home, all felt dark and dun
\nTill, slowly, slowly, the children came down <\/p>\n
Masked and washing their hands very often
\nThey went into the yard, tried to have fun.
\nBut out on the street, a little girl spied
\nA skeleton-like form– a dog that’d almost died.<\/p>\n
Were his owners too sick, or had they fled
\nForgetting him, abandoning him in their fear or dread
\nOf the virus? <\/p>\n
All the children who saw his feebly wagging tail
\nAs he leaned on the sidewalk’s rusty red rail
\nDetermined that this little dog wouldn’t die
\nAnd they thought long and hard.<\/p>\n
They begged their parents to order in dog-food
\nFor the dog who’d barely outgrown his puppy hood.
\nAnd they promised to make up the money
\nBy delivering all the goods that’d been left at the gate.<\/p>\n
The residents were happy to pay a little more
\nTo have their essentials delivered at the door.
\nThe children used the cash to feed the poor strays
\nFor there were four dogs nearby in the same case.<\/p>\n
The dogs were adopted after the curbs eased
\nBut my admiration for the kids’ empathy never ceased.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It’ll all blow over, don’t worry, some said But the hospitals were full, there was nary a bed And the TV showed sidewalks with hearses, and the dead Waiting to be buried. Communities had barricaded themselves in All deliveries were dropped off to be collected…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2849,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1136],"tags":[4909,2538,4880],"class_list":["post-117159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-half-marathon-poem","category-official-marathon-prompts","tag-2022halfmarathon","tag-hour13","tag-2022-poetry-marathon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2849"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117159"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":117169,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117159\/revisions\/117169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}