Sonnet Challenge #38

I decided to spent some of my new free time to call people I haven’t seen in a while, or have stopped seeing in the course of life because of the social distancing.  I also decided to use the time for some more poetry.  On Sunday afternoon I sat down to write a poem but didn’t find any inspiration, so I decided to call someone.  I got voicemail.  So I called someone else.  Ditto.  Eight voicemails later, I had my inspiration.

Voicemail

A quiet day with little going on,
in Covid times the schedule is quite bare.
I miss my friends, hope they have not become
statistics with what’s going on out there.
I guess they also won’t have much to do
so thought I’d be the one that would reach out,
pick up the phone and say “Hey, how are you?”
not leave our friendship’s worth to me in doubt.
But all I got was voicemails! Every one!
Had I missed out on something? Checked the news…
there’s really nothing different going on!
I guess just me that’s sat here with the blues.
They’ll all call back at once, that’s what they’ll do
And get my outgoing voicemail message too!

I’ve spent years mulling over this poem.

I feel that I finally got it right.  Questions on the back of a comment if you don’t get the symbolism in the first two verses and would like to know what it means…..

Tribe

First the mirror,
then blood.

The heart beats stronger
than the tree grows
on the land if there are few of you,
yet the skin is more tactile
than the cloth;
the tongue
louder than the book, which is
more vocal than the anvil.

We run ourselves ragged
in the circles in which
we think we move,
tripping over ankle-height
revolving cogs
intersecting and grinding,
snarling with different grooves
forcing us to question
our motives,
your reasons,
everyone’s voices
until we are dizzy with
the mesmer of conficts.

We cry out
‘where is our tribe?’
But the tears on the mirror
obscure our true selves,
our image
and everything behind it,
fizzling into a formless haze,
blinding us so we no longer see
we should be
we are
we cannot continue unless
we become one.