Category: Pandemic

Mother’s Day Gift in the Pandemic

Lana 3 Comments 
 Mother’s Day Gift in the Pandemic
  
 As the young man comes closer 
 than three feet to hand me 
 a complementary 
 Mother's Day gift bag, 
 You may be killing me 
 is what I think but do not say, 
 feeling the heat of fury 
 rise in my throat. 
  
 I am trying to keep my mouth shut, 
 hold my breath, 
 my cotton mask no match for his youth 
 and eagerness to provide 
 cheerful customer service. 
 He has on a mask, but somehow 
 I can tell he's smiling—
 happy eyes. 
  
 He’s high school age, 
 maybe a bit older,
 wants to chat. 
 Says he's going to go 
 for lots of hikes. 
 Never has he appreciated the sun 
 so much since coronavirus,
 all this being trapped indoors. 
  
 He seems so fervent and strong 
 and maybe will have 
 a whole life ahead of him. 
 I hope so.
 Mine may be over soon 
 now that his breath has come 
 within the death radius. 
  
 He glows with health. 
 I have lived longer than 
 I ever believed I would, 
 an angsty teen thinking maybe 
 I'd make it to 21. 
  
 But the years passed with me 
 still breathing. 
 I see now even in the worst 
 of times—with my grandmother 
 dying, my violent husband
 trying to kill me, 
 my father dying, 
 my separation, divorce, 
 my best friend dying, 
 my brother dying—
 all of it was a gift 
 I had little idea how to unwrap,
 how to make use of.
  
 Now as each day is 
 a promise not made, 
 I cherish the sweetness 
 of this boy's optimism,
 my little puff of anger gone. 
  
 I have never been a mother 
 to any but four-legged creatures.
 Suddenly I have this lethal urge 
 to hug this young man—
 Coronavirus be damned—
 tell him he is wonderful 
 and loved and the world is 
 better for his presence in it. 
  
 I do neither.
 I don't know him.
 But I do wish him well
 and thank him 
 for his heroism in this time.
 I hope the world will be 
 the kind of mother 
 he needs most. 
  
 As for me, 
 today is as good a last day 
 on earth as any. 
 Though I'd rather rain 
 than this balmy sun. 
 I've had a mere five decades to 
 practice my humanity, 
 still very much a work in progress.
  
 No one ever gets it completely right
 my Buddhist coach assures me. 
 Last week she came close to 
 being in a fatal auto accident.
 The sun was not so blameless then, 
 blinding her as she came 
 around a curve. 
  
 Who would have thought us 
 as fragile as we are 
 against light and breath? 
 Today I will pet my dogs 
 and cats and hug my husband. 
 Drink tea. 
 Eat a ginger cookie or two. 
 It will be enough. More than.

Pandemic Wonder, for Andy

Lana 3 Comments 
Pandemic Wonder
             for Andy
  
 None of us is immune
 to death, we humans born 
 with an expiration guarantee.
 This was always the deal.
  
 So why does death feel 
 more real than ever before?
 There’s no cure or vaccine
 for the Corvid 19 yet, sure
  
 and there may never be.
 Perhaps it will rage
 through all humanity
 until only the fittest remain.
  
 How many lives will be
 claimed when this 
 pandemic is finally history?
 That, and for how long
  
 this enforced isolation will 
 continue are a fatal mystery.
 But you and I are blessed
 that while living through
  
 such stressful times, we are 
 one another’s shelter in place, 
 each other’s compassionate grace.
 And the days, however brief
  
 they may be, grow sweeter
 not in spite of, but because of
 coronavirus’ looming noose.
 We live so much closer now—
  
 as we should have done all along, 
 a gift granted by uncertainty—
 this death threat that heightens 
 and enlivens our love.

Another World, a pandemic poem

Lana 1 Comment 
 Another World
             a pandemic poem
  
This morning I woke in the former world, 
the world before the virus, or so I believed. 
The sun had the same kiss of brass to it 
as it does in this post Covid 19 morning. 
The scent of spring was similarly buoyant
on the morning breeze, daffodils and the early 
hyacinths. The same black-mohawked Steller’s Jay 
perched on the edge of the roof, staring down 
at the morning coastline below our hillside, 
sea dark and serene, swells horizonward with 
white crests like bobbing gulls. They may 
have been actual seagulls, this morning, 
or in that former world. A calm, lulled, 
sort of ordinary morning that brims with 
coffee aroma and the slow thoughts that come 
into focus with each sip—the necessary 
to do list—work, pets, chores. A morning that 
but for the virus could be any other. I can 
take  my cat into my arms, but not hug 
my neighbor, just home from his cataract 
surgery at the hospital. I cannot take 
the dogs for a morning stroll in 
the shuttered park, nor meet a friend out 
for lunch, nor run an errand 
just to pick up an item or two. 
Every decision in this world’s morning 
is about staying far from death’s embrace. 
About keeping each other safe. 
About love filtered through masks and screens 
and the morning light of pandemic.
  

Welcome to the New World, a pandemic poem

Lana 4 Comments 
Lana Hechtman Ayers
  
 Welcome to the New World
  
 Movement in my peripheral vision’s edge
 makes me look away from the screen
 out the window in front of my desk.
 I’m barely in time to catch the tell-tale
 white head and serrated wide wings
 of an eagle—American symbol of freedom—
 before it soars over the roofline out of view.
 I’ve been staring at my computer for so long
 the words of the manuscript I’m editing 
 have become ancient hieroglyphics. 
  
 The sight of the cumulus-filled sky bordered 
 in blue and the rippled pink-tinged beige sand 
 and aqua green seawater below the hillside 
 is such welcome relief. Concentration has been 
 hard to achieve with the startling grief 
 I’m experiencing  during this global pandemic—
 so many losses. To look out at this bright spring day 
 one could be fooled into believing all is well. 
 Calm. People strolling the weekday beach,
 throwing frisbees or tossing balls to their dogs.
  
 Even the stubborn hydrangea outside my porch
 gate has come into full leaf, buds at the ready.
 But my heart will not settle into steady rhythm.
 My breath is shallow. Later, I must make my weekly
 excursion into town for food—masked, gloved,
 hatted, scarfed—looking like a nineteenth century
 immigrant just off the boat from Poland,
 wearing all of the clothes she owned at once, 
 frightened of the unknown new territory where
 communication and comfort appeared impossible.
  
 I wonder, is this how my grandmother felt,
 fifteen and alone, disembarked at Ellis Island
 into the blinding sunlight after weeks seasick
 in the dark bowels of the ship? Her family had sent
 her in 1918, decades ahead of the holocaust, 
 not knowing she’d be the only one of her bloodline
 to make safe passage. And how did my young
 grandmother manage her loneliness, 
 knowing no one else, everyone and everything 
 around her strange and possibly dangerous?
  
 I never once in all the years I knew her, nor 
 in the years since her passing, stopped to think 
 of her bravery. I never thanked her or celebrated 
 her for being the heroine she was. She made my 
 American life possible. If my grandmother could 
 muster all that courage at the tender age of fifteen 
 for a sea journey of weeks, surely, I can 
 manage as much for a simple half-hour trip to 
 the grocery store and back, in my own car,
 me a native here in my fifth decade of life.