Ode to Panic by Goodness Olanrewaju Ayoola

The curtain opens to an empty vestry,
Pulpit silence rising to the grief of empty pews
Occupied
By a cathedral of coffins covered in an air of immunity.

The horror of death and silence bow my back;
Silence
So loud until my heart caves into a one deep breath: sigh
So large to house a giant
Orchestra at a makeshift morgue stuck on replay.

And these days, the atlas finds its way to my lap: the world
Under the
Watch of my eyes. My eyes, a tributary of sorrow;

Perhaps a miracle spring in the dread,
In the desolate places:

Where flowers, delicate, once bloomed, at best, they,
Full of light and dreams in full embrace of the year of the rat; where
Bodies once blended with the lushly or the not-so-lushly, now
Crowned by a circle/cycle of death.

It’s the first time in a while; I’ll greet the ground my knees
Without purpose,
And when I want to begin with God, the only thing I could summon
Is grief: an epitaph of
Darkness for the feared-dead shrouding my tongue;

I am back on the statistics table, death marvels at death;
Death is a
Cup running over, the innocent winers soaked wet; death,
Larger than graves;

I take the measurement of the declining stock
For the lock-down,
The length of impatience and the inheritance of the roaming pestilence;

What is left of the panic buying is

Panic.

Goodness Olanrewaju Ayoola is a Nigerian poet and teacher of English who reaches out to poetry as escapism from the contentions within and around him. His poetry has appeared in Glass, Pangolin Review, Mojave Heart, Ethel Zine and elsewhere. He is a Best of the Net Award Nominee and author of Meditations (WRR, 2016). Say hi to him on @GoodnessLanre