like an autumn leaf

like an autumn leaf, I’m clinging against the wind
crimson flushed, vexed by this calamity’s cruel din
now furloughed from the cubicle that once sustained
makeshift desk, remotely linked at home, is not the same
but duty calls, resigned am I to shelter in

one by one we watched the nations fail to win
succumbing to this foe, that strikes us from within
pandemics don’t discriminate, we’re the same
like an autumn leaf

my bank account and pantry are slowly growing thin
worried for coworkers, my family, my friends
normal lost forever, “new normal” stakes its claim
history will remember, we were forever changed
many not surviving this cruel whirlwind
like an autumn leaf

~kat

NaPoWriMo/GloPoWriMo Challenge Day 1: Write a self-portrait poem in which you make a specific action a metaphor for your life – one that typically isn’t done all that often, or only in specific circumstances. For example, bowling, or shopping for socks, or shoveling snow, or teaching a child to tie its shoes.

For today’s poem, a Rondeau. The Rondeau is a French form, 15 lines long, consisting of three stanzas: a quintet, a quatrain, and a sestet with a rhyme scheme as follows: aabba aabR aabbaR. Lines 9 and 15 are short – a refrain (R) consisting of a phrase taken from line one. The other lines are longer (but all of the same metrical length).