Life on the Pause Button

You are happily working on your machine
When the swirling beach ball hits the screen
Perhaps simply meant to entertain
Let’s hope not the harbinger of pain

This spinning rainbow wheel should not alarm
It’s not intended to do us harm
It signifies attempts to run an application
And should not cause undue frustration

I wonder if that’s how you feel now
Life put on Pause, you don’t know how
That hovering disk of coronavirus
Huge interruption, undesirous

The coloured disk is just a sign
In computing really quite benign
Just a minor interruption
Not heralding life’s destruction

But here we are, all normal life on pause
Heroic NHS we would applause
And all those who help life to sustain
Until this menace we constrain

In due time that swirling ball should disappear
When we may cast aside our fear
Slowly from enforced isolation
Arise subdued and chastened nation

But in the meantime we must be patient
Each new day must be sufficient
And ‘normality’ will in time return
Then new patterns we must surely learn

Ken Fisher