So far to go through

Today’s offering is a poem. I am honoured that Rémy Deck, a brilliant musician and composer, offered to score my recording of it. That is to be listened to first, if you please, and then you can find the transcript and an explanation below.

I am judging myself every day. Whatever I am, whoever she is, not enough, not right.

Compared to those who are scared to feed their families, am I a fool because I fear for all?

We are in a new hollow. Deep, yet, with not knowing.

I can barely type, my fingers heavy on the keys. And I cry with anger over the impossibilities that are being shouted in my country as certainties, regardless of the additional lives that could be lost.

Of course, it does not matter, now, who is doing the “better job” in this crisis for it is up to us, globally, to do the best job, as a community, whole.

So, me, and you, let us think to put our ego thinking aside…that continual train that says, “No.”

It would seem as though while we cannot help but to listen blindly to our world leaders (some of whom are doing whole heartedly well while others are shouting out through the dark) we most certainly can listen to ourselves. Instinctively, we know.

What needs to be done. What is not being done nor taken under hand?

As this goes on, I cannot imagine that anyone but us will actually make the change for things to be better.

Can we do it?

In the midst of our every day, every night grief, can we pay respect to all whom we have lost in saying “Ca suffit.” That’s enough.

That’s enough, now. That’s enough.

(and yet we are so far from done)

A few weeks ago, Ruth Ribeaucourt sent me an article entitled, “That discomfort you are feeling is grief” . It was an incredibly helpful tool at a time when we were not yet speaking of universal grieving but it has come back to me today in acknowledgement that one of the primary steps in processing it is…anger.

I wrote this poem last night because I was so angry that I couldn’t sleep. It is anger that has such amplitude that at times, I turn it in on myself. So without, so within. Anger that somehow, despite all conceiving, my home country has a dangerous president who did nothing, is doing nothing when his country is deep in crisis with nearly 50,000 deaths already reported with more to come. Who casually suggests disinfectant injections – which are most-likely lethal – as a possible cure for COVID 19. That a financial bailout is readily available for large corporations while people like my Sister struggle around the clock to keep her small business afloat. And what about the family featured in This New York Times article , who do not know how they are going to eat and whose daughter is vomiting because they can no longer afford her much needed medication? That there are people getting in line at 4am for food donations and will have to wait six hours to receive them?

How is this possible? How? In the so-called world’s richest nation? We have to speak up. This has to stop. That’s enough. We can do so much better than this.