Typewriter Rodeo: Pandemic – Year One

Each week, the Standard reaches out to Austin’s Typewriter Rodeo for a custom poem on Texas topics.

By Kari Anne HoltMarch 26, 2021 9:42 am, , ,

It’s been a year now since initial lockdown measures began across much of the United States. A year of evaluating everything through the prism of coronavirus risk. A year of job loss, community loss, lives lost. How do you measure a year? That was the inspiration for this Typewriter Rodeo poem.

Pandemic: Year One

in a lifetime
a year is a blink
a sigh
a moment lost
in time

unless that year
lasts a lifetime

unless that year
ends a lifetime

unless that year
never ends
trapped seconds
that repeat
instead of
going by

a year is nothing
a year is everything
how has it been a year already?
why won’t this year
ever
end?

a photo of the typewritten poem on a torn piece of paper

Typewriter Rodeo airs each Friday on Texas Standard. Send us your ideas for a poem on FacebookTwitter, or send us an email.

Typewriter Rodeo is also available anytime in podcast form.

If you found the reporting above valuable, please consider making a donation to support it here. Your gift helps pay for everything you find on texasstandard.org and KUT.org. Thanks for donating today.