Forward, a poem
She’d been a nurse for a long time, but things were different now in the pandemic.
There was so much grief on both individual and national scales. It was a time of global mourning and yet there seemed to be no appropriate outlet—no special place, or day, or ritual to mark our losses as a human family.
She’d used words, poems, in the past as a writer and a reader, but now it seemed the best thing she could offer was silence and listening.
Forward
Nurses cried who hadn’t
cried in decades.
I’m not a painter
or a sculptor-
all I have is words
and the lack of them
and in that space
I listen.
Have we grown soft?
I think of my grandma
born 1914. I think of forced
typhoid vaccines, and death.
Thoughts pass through,
then leave, and I inhale
to get spiritual footing,
and pray.
We can’t fix all
but we do need
to witness. Which is hard
with no place to mourn,
no funeral, no bedside vigil
as patients died alone.
And, as I said before,
no words.
I don’t want this poem
to make me cry.
Let it be a firm place
to put my foot
as we move forward,
eyes ahead.
