You're right, Looocinda, it IS always one more thing ... but the Covid shutdown was a kind of Thing we hadn't dealt with for a long time and were (thanks to certain unmentionables) so badly prepared for. I think its effects are still working themselves out in all of us.
This is beautiful and powerful and captures the pandemic, especially those first months when we knew so little and then it kept changing. I still remember where I was when we shut down. We knew it was coming and then it was there and it felt like we were staring into a gaping hole. I love the idea of pandemic healing circles.
I listened to your poem as I got up this morning. Everyone else was asleep (I needed to take our dog to an appointment) and being in a silent house, listening to your poem, brought me back very profoundly to that time. This poem is so timeless while being so specifically rooted in time.
Also, I love the idea/the wish for a chance to sit and share with each other, especially this last bit: "Just long enough to name what each of us carried away from that time, so that we don’t sink under the weight of what we’re carrying while we try to stay in motion."
Thank you for the mention. You, Elizabeth, are doing this brave work, and I'm so honored to be along for the ride with you.
I appreciate how you found words to capture the uncertainties, the shifting landscape of pretending to know what we couldn't possibly know, and how for some "moving on" hasn't been possible. I wonder, in your story circles, if there have been discussions of how the pandemic was, for those of us young enough and on soils removed enough, our first experience with war.
Thanks for this, Elizabeth. Coincidentally, my post today also referenced Covid. I clearly haven't moved on completely.
Your poem does an excellent job of capturing a series of snapshots from this moment in history, Elizabeth. And yes to this: "at the same time there’s part of me wishing that, in the midst of that movement, we could all spend some time sitting still together in story circles … just long enough to really listen to what has changed:"
Wow. You captured the most impactful event in recent history very powerfully. And good call to still take time to process how it affected, and affects, everyone. Thank you.
So many things have changed. So much loss... Thank you for this poem.
💛🌿
It is important to remember and keep sharing in our experience.
I agree. Thank you, MK.
Your poem outlined so much of the disturbing mixed messages people heard (or thought they
did?)
Mental health suffered more then …or did really?
New vicious Covid, variant and now an uncertain election…my thinking is -it’s always
just one more thing.
You're right, Looocinda, it IS always one more thing ... but the Covid shutdown was a kind of Thing we hadn't dealt with for a long time and were (thanks to certain unmentionables) so badly prepared for. I think its effects are still working themselves out in all of us.
This is beautiful and powerful and captures the pandemic, especially those first months when we knew so little and then it kept changing. I still remember where I was when we shut down. We knew it was coming and then it was there and it felt like we were staring into a gaping hole. I love the idea of pandemic healing circles.
"We knew it was coming and then it was there and it felt like we were staring into a gaping hole." So much this, LeeAnn!
Holding the idea of those circles in my heart. Not a clue how to convene them, but a clue (or someone who has one) may yet appear.
I listened to your poem as I got up this morning. Everyone else was asleep (I needed to take our dog to an appointment) and being in a silent house, listening to your poem, brought me back very profoundly to that time. This poem is so timeless while being so specifically rooted in time.
Also, I love the idea/the wish for a chance to sit and share with each other, especially this last bit: "Just long enough to name what each of us carried away from that time, so that we don’t sink under the weight of what we’re carrying while we try to stay in motion."
Thank you for the mention. You, Elizabeth, are doing this brave work, and I'm so honored to be along for the ride with you.
WE are doing this brave work, Margaret Ann. 💛🌿
💛
I appreciate how you found words to capture the uncertainties, the shifting landscape of pretending to know what we couldn't possibly know, and how for some "moving on" hasn't been possible. I wonder, in your story circles, if there have been discussions of how the pandemic was, for those of us young enough and on soils removed enough, our first experience with war.
Thanks for this, Elizabeth. Coincidentally, my post today also referenced Covid. I clearly haven't moved on completely.
Thank you back, Elizabeth. Storytellers and poets will hold the door open to healing from this "war."
Your poem does an excellent job of capturing a series of snapshots from this moment in history, Elizabeth. And yes to this: "at the same time there’s part of me wishing that, in the midst of that movement, we could all spend some time sitting still together in story circles … just long enough to really listen to what has changed:"
Thank you, Petra.
Beautifully powerful, yet with a deft lightness of touch, mirroring the fragility of life.
Thank you so much, Maureen. I appreciate the restack as well.
One of the best pandemic poems I've read, historically, lyrically.
We need more pandemic poems out there! Thank you for your kind words about this one, Kim, and thank you for restacking it.
Wow. You captured the most impactful event in recent history very powerfully. And good call to still take time to process how it affected, and affects, everyone. Thank you.
Thank you, Petrina! 🧡
Ooof. The memories. And everything "on screen." Thank you for continuing to share.
Sooooo much on screen....! Thank you for reading (and re-stacking), Michele.