I’m usually not down for topical or occasional poetry, with a few exceptions. Follows one of them, practically a found poem which began as a tweet.
True, one feature which attracts me to Twitter is its haiku-like constraint of 280 characters. I rarely compose a tweet spontaneously without care for economy of means. Brevity is also the soul of poetry.
Anosmia or smell-blindness was a hashtag ad-on in the original tweet. Here it’s become the title.
Loss of smell and taste are in fact early symptoms of covid, which, as envisioned in the poem, are part of a larger loss imposed by social distancing on society as a whole, since we can no longer taste or smell others without frightening proximity.
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I suddenly saw folks who were too close!
THEY WEREN’T WEARING MASKS!
Soon enough, faces without masks
may come to signify times sad past
when you could be breathed on by,
smell or taste someone else
without FEAR OF DEATH