How to Digest Time by Andrea Jordan

The best way to digest time
is to break it down into manageable mouthfuls
of months, weeks, days or minutes, because
a year is too big to swallow in just one hit.
Unlike the Church which scoffs in centuries
I need my time in smaller bits.
Sometimes even a minute is too big a bite,
at others I can manage whole days without having to chew at all.Ingesting a pandemic
is a new and different skill entirely.
Now time has been puréed for our Covid convenience,
blanded into a pottage drip of days,
unendingly vanilla flavoured.

A fool suggests replacing days with disinfectant,
to end our years in one fell swoop,
to cure ourselves completely
with a single I.V. bag of bleach.

But there will come a time, it may be soon,
it may be longer,
when we will leave our coronavirus cocoons
convalescent and ravenous.
We’ll take great bites of life again,
wolf them down to scour away
the insipid taste of lockdown gruel
which we’d forced down unaccepting gullets.

Take morsels of minutes, lovingly prepared,
smothered in spices, in herby breadcrumb coats,
deep fried until golden.
With plates piled high to overflowing
we’ll stuff our faces full of all those tasty hours,
and wash them down with a vintage wine of weeks.
Raise our glasses to each other in a thankful toast to life restored,
and whisper into our elbows
so as not to wake the virus:
“This time everything really is going to be amazing”.

Retired and living in Mayo with my four dogs.

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