Spark hope for your Covid Recovery with poems by Amanda Gorman “Call Us What We Carry.” This poet captures a shipwrecked moment in time and transforms it into a lyric of hope and healing.
FUGUE
. . . Anxiety is a living body.
It is the last creature standing,
Poised beside us like a shadow.
The only beast who loves us
Enough to stay.
. . . We were already thousands
of deaths into the year
every time we fell heart-first into the news,
…..Head first, dread first,
Our bodies tight and tensed with what now?
Yet who has the courage to inquire what if?
What hope shall we shelter
Within us like a secret,
Second smile
Private & pure.
Sorry if we’re way less friendly-
We had Covid tryna and things.
…We shift with instinct,
Like the flash of a school of fish.
Our regard for one another
Not tumored,
Just transformed
This glassed hour, paused,
Bursts like a loaded star,
Belonging always to us.
What more must we believe in
Spark Hope For Your Covid Recovery
SCHOOLS-OUT
. . There is nothing more worrisome
Than a titan who believes itself
Separate from the world.
. . .The announcement
Swung blunt as an axe-blow:
All students were to leave
Campus as soon as possible.
. . .There is power in being robbed
& still choosing to dance.
THERE IS NO POWER LIKE HOME
We were sick of home,
Home sick.
That mask around our ear
hung itself into the year.
. . . Our mask is no veil, but a view.
What are we, if not what we see in another.
THE SHALLOWS
Touch-deficient &
Light-starved we were ,
Like an inverted flame,
Eating any warmth down to its studs.
. . .What we have lived
Remains indecipherable.
. . .Watch us move above the fog
like a promontory at dusk.
Shall this leave us bitter?
or better?
Grieve.
Then choose.
& SO
It is easy to harp,
Harder to hope.
. . .Since the world is round,
There is no way to walk away
From each other, for even then
We are coming back together.
CUT
There is no simple way to hurt.
The real damaged is dammed, disrupted.
We must change this ending in everyway.
. . .Some days, we just need a place
Where we can bleed in peace.
Our only word for this is
Poem.
GOOD GRIEF
. . .Despair exits us the same way it enters-
Turning through the mouth.
Even now conviction
Strange magic on our tongues.
IN THE DEEP
…Yes, nostalgia has it purposes-
Transport from the spectered,
The jobs never coming back,
The mother’s primal screams,
Our childrens minds shuttered from school,
The funerals without familes,
Wedding in waiting,
The births in isolation.
Let no one again
Have to begin, love, or end, alone.
Goal: chop into flow
Update
As of May 2023 While we are not in crisis mode any longer, we can’t let our guard down per WHO, (World Health Organization.) There have been over 1,124,000 deaths in US from confirmed cases. It was deemed the 4th leading cause of death by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. We still do not know China’s role due to lack of cooperation on the issue.