Where were you when the World Stopped?

by Melody Bear (25 May 2020)

Where were you when the World Stopped?
At home with family, your livelihood intact?
Did you still commute? Or work from home?
Did you reconnect with neighbours over the fence?
And distant friends and family on Zoom?
 
Or were you isolated? On your own?
In a Hospital? A Detention Centre? A Nursing Home?
Stuck in a house full of people driving you nuts?
Sitting in the ashes of your burnt-out life?
 
Where were you when the World Stopped?
In a Foreign Land, locked in a Hotel Room?
At the Embassy, desperate to get a flight home?
On the Cruise of a Life-Time?
 
When they hit the Pause Button, did it take you by surprise?
Or did you see it coming? Were you waiting
for the Juggernaut lurching towards the cliff-edge
to stop dead in its caterpillar tracks?
Like me.

Poet biography:
Born 1951, in Pomona (Goddess of Apple Orchards) SE Queensland, where Glasshouse Mountains brood over pineapple fields. Uprooted: Kenilworth, Biloela, Brisbane, Sydney. 1973 fell in love with a Gang Gang in a pine tree on City Hill, Canberra. 1980 made it to Canberra, and grew new roots, now deeply anchored. Two adult daughters. BA (Hons 1^st) Early English. Sidereal Astrologer. Obsessed by Fairy Tales, Megalithic Britain, Crete, Machu Pichu, Ancient Australia. Writing is therapy, performing scary, still onstage she sings, plays guitar, and in circle uses drum, rattle and flute as a guide to other dimensions.