Pandemic Poetry

A Fevered Vision

A transcendent moment at the height of my COVID fever.

Softly, so softly, peacefulness settled over me.

Burning with fever, lying in bed, I floated in an ocean of birdsong, somehow able to distinguish each chirping note of every bird and the whir of a hummingbird’s wings.

I opened my eyes.

Was I in heaven?

The curtains, gauzy white, billowed in the afternoon breeze. And the sunlight streamed through the glass shelves, lighting up my great-great-grandmother’s red glass orb-vase.

A sense of connection trilled through me.

Somehow, I knew her, that distant relative from ages past, and was a part of her, as she was a part of me.

Then it began, the goldening.

I felt it first in my fingers and hands, a gilding of light wrapping them, enfolding them.

And, slowly, it spread.

I knew then why my grandmother had come to me in a vision, just days before all of this began. “I’m here, Sweetie,” she had whispered. Now, I could almost feel her papery skin and see her in her kitchen in Tucson with the light streaming through the window, haloing her familiar form.

I sensed that light, that same light, that honey-drenched illumination everywhere now, in the birds and the trees and all of humanity.

I felt like Svetaketu, that ancient Indian boy whose father sat him down beneath a fig tree and told him that the same essence that was in the fig seeds was also in the fig tree and was in you and in me. “Tat tvam asi,” he said. “You are that.”

And I suddenly knew that everything would be all right, as it should be, as it would be.

And I knew that I was in heaven, but also here on earth, holding on to that vision of energy pulsing through and around every particle of being.

The hummingbird trilled and swooped again.

And I settled into peace.

This poem is my truth. As I lay in bed with a 104.7° F fever, unsure which direction this COVID-19 journey would take me, I awakened from sleep in the late afternoon to this vision. I have only felt this sense of peace one time before, after being run over by a truck when I was twenty and finding myself floating in the treetops and drifting towards the sun.

Wherever you are, I hope that you can find a little sense of peace in the midst of this pandemic. While these are difficult times, there is always a ray of hope to be found. I think that it is possible that we will emerge from this time as a better society, one which truly understands how complex the interconnection is between ourselves and the rest of the world around us.

The tale of Svetaketu is from the Chandogya Upanishad.

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This is the story of my experience after being run over by a truck when I was younger:

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A peaceful poem:

Erika Burkhalter is a yogi, neurophilosopher, cat-mom, photographer, and lover of travel and nature, spreading her love and amazement for Mother Earth’s glories, one photo, poem or story at a time. (MS Neuropsychology, MA Yoga Studies). Erika is also an editor for Dharma Talk.

Photos, poem and story © Erika Burkhalter. All rights reserved.