Lana Hechtman Ayers Embraces a pandemic poem A few nights ago, in the car on our way to our sheltering place, I was contemplating how all over the virtual world there is fear and poetry, people reporting sadness and success at isolation. All I could think was dark thoughts, how in two weeks or so many of us will be ill, and some gone forever. “Six degrees of separation,” my husband said, as our car careened through ghost town streets, “guarantees we will know someone whose life the virus claims. “And yet,” he continues, “Statistically, only a couple of percent of the billions of people on earth will die, so, it’s truly unlikely that it will be you or me.” I was a Mathematics major in college many decades ago, so my rational mind should have believed him. But the only place my thoughts could traverse was we haven’t written our wills. Our two dogs asleep in the back seat dreamt with bated breaths, perhaps chasing prey, unknowing of the prey all we humans had become. At home, where we’ll remain for untold months to come, we may hurt for healthy groceries, supplements, cleaning supplies, but reading material and entertainment channels flourish. However, no amount of binge watching British police dramas quells my prospering fears. The only way I manage even a few hours of restless sleep is to keep inventing a movie inside my head I hope someday some director will actually film— unreeling across my closed eyelids I watch strangers hugging in restaurants, strangers hugging in offices, in the middle of crowded streets, hugging in grocery stores and at gas stations— this and only this allows me to let go of the day’s dread, this envisioning of humans reaching out for one another, with open arms and hearts, these embraces after pandemic
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