Lockdown times

Hope 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 later

All stores shut down and their owners fled

To the countryside where it was said

The virus couldn’t survive.

With its hundred apartments, our own community,

Locked the two sets of gates, which we’d never seen done.

People worked from home, all felt dark and dun

Till, slowly, slowly, the children came down

Masked and washing their hands very often

They went into the yard, tried to have fun.

But out on the street, a little girl spied

A skeleton-like form– a dog that’d almost died.

Were his owners too sick, or had they fled

Forgetting him, abandoning him in their fear or dread

Of the virus?

All the children who saw his feebly wagging tail

As he leaned on the sidewalk’s rusty red rail

Determined that this little dog wouldn’t die

And they thought long and hard.

They begged their parents to order in dog-food

For the dog who’d barely outgrown his puppy hood.

And they promised to make up the money

By delivering all the goods that’d been left at the gate.

The residents were happy to pay a little more

To have their essentials delivered at the door.

The children used the cash to feed the poor strays

For there were four dogs nearby in the same case.

The dogs were adopted after the curbs eased

But my admiration for the kids’ empathy never ceased.

They became my superheroes!