The Parade’s Gone By

Miss Desmond, your boy was right:

The parade’s gone by,

I heard it’s moved online – 

A nice place to visit but 

I sure as hell don’t want to live

Where I can only touch

What I cannot feel. 

“We didn’t need dialogue. We had faces!” you cried,

But Norma, now that’s all we got:

Talking heads, ephemeral shadows

Locked behind a screen

And I can’t get a connection.

Yes Miss Desmond, the parade has indeed passed us by;

It’s been a week but I can still hear the stomping of the boots in my ears,

My hope waving good-bye to a tardy Santa Claus,

Collecting tinsel

I am forbidden to touch.

– Heather Babcock, March 2020

***

Note: This is not a political poem. I wrote this Sunday morning as a way to work through the anxiety and fear that I have been experiencing due to the Covid-19 shutdowns. I thought that Norma Desmond – the fictional silent film star from Sunset Boulevard (1950), a woman who is described by her younger lover as “waving to a parade that had long passed her by”- was a good symbol for the way that I am feeling right now. The difference is that Norma mourned the passing of silence while I miss the noise.

So very much. ❤