The Great Pause

These are strange times.
The night feels vacant and distant
With a palpable lack of human
Laughter—an empty, vast room
Where voices used to echo.
Now it is a tomb
Housing the remains of the dead.
Even in stillness there is a buzzing
All around, an anxious vibration
That calls out to no one.
Are you still here?
If so, can you hear it?
The crickets chirp on,
In pulse and rhythm with the void.
A dog barks from his quarantined
Circle around the tree that tethers
His dirty chain.
There are still distractions,
But they have shifted form,
Become the things we seek out
As opposed to the things we try
To push away
In the name of productivity.
We remain the same, somehow,
Yet universally we are changed.
Internally, we are changed.
Or at least, some of us will be.
Others will forge on in the name of
Normalcy.
While the Ones Who Have Been Waiting
Will use this as their time
Of calling:
Their time to finally shine the light,
Be the answer-givers, the prophets,
The truth saviors of what is right.
There is no such thing as right.
Or left.
Only balance, only perception,
Only truth, subjective to our own
Explicit journeys.
Forge on, soldiers of solitude.
Is separation truly an illusion?
Is apartness really attainable?
Your answers are baked
Into the infinitely tiered cake
Of what we think we must know.