Half a league, half a league
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
“Forward the Light Brigade…”
~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Hmmm, is the solution to the problem a kick-ass leaf blower?
Earlier this week while I was working from home, I heard a loud noise outside in my townhouse complex. I went to the window to investigate. It turned out to be the landscape crew who had arrived for the spring cleanup. Four men with industrial-strength leaf blowers at full bore.
Ordinarily, I would be annoyed at the disturbance. But this time was different. Why? Because it was an annual activity happening at precisely the time it should – a triumph of normalcy when most of the world around me is turned upside down.
It occurred to me, in one of those inspired leaps of insight, that perhaps here was a solution to the pandemic that has twisted us out of shape. I sense you frowning, but hear me out.
I propose that we assemble all the landscape crews across the country with their mighty leaf blowers. We can supplement the ranks with those thrown out of work by the lockdown and eager to be productive again.
The assault begins in the middle of Manitoba. Two lines of leaf blower warriors stand back to back. At the sound of the horn of battle, they fire up their blowers and start marching forward side by side blowing all the COVID virus molecules ahead of them. Every file miles they hand off to another crew who continues the march.
At the Manitoba border east and west, crews await from the neighbouring provinces to take up the charge. The Eastern Brigade swings around Hudson’s Bay, loops down through Southern Ontario, expands north and south through Quebec and presses forward to Labrador. Simultaneously, the Maritime Brigade sweeps through the Atlantic Provinces.
The Western Brigade crosses the flatlands of Saskatchewan with ease and into Alberta while a Northern Brigade blows it way through Nunavut, NWT and the Yukon. An intrepid team of mountaineer landscapers will be needed to cross the Rocky Mountains into B.C.
Precisely one week after it all began, the final Eastern, Western, Northern and Atlantic teams reach the shores of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. They blow the wall of COVID-19 out into the ocean where pods of whales gorge on it like a feast of Krill.
I think it could work. I really do, if we just believe! It surely cannot be any less effective than what we have tried so far. A clean sweep from coast to coast like a through spring cleaning.
With apologies to Lord Tennyson, we will call it The Charge of the COVID Brigade. Are you with me?
~ Now Available Online from Amazon, Chapters Indigo or Barnes & Noble: Hunting Muskie, Rites of Passage – Stories by Michael Robert Dyet
~ Michael Robert Dyet is also the author of Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel which was a double winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2009. Visit Michael’s website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com or the novel online companion at www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog.
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Tags: COVID19 · leaf blower · metaphor · Michael Robert Dyet · The Charge of the Light BrigadeNo Comments