Prayer to the People

Fellow citizens of this great country

Built on hope and horror

Liberty and inequality

Invention and detention 

Arise now in these difficult days 

And illuminate the world with the depth of your decency  

Fellow citizens of this tortured land

Who struggle daily 

With illness, violence, and questions of truth

Lean into the wisdom of good books and good people 

Love your neighbor and

Bring the fairness that can only come 

From just us 

Oh, beautiful Americans, 

Obey your better natures 

Not despots or desperation

Care for the desperate and dispirited

Choose goodness and generosity

Open your arms wide 

Embrace each other 

And the future 

When This Is Over...

When This is Over…

We will breathe, dance, run, prance,

And laugh, laugh, laugh, laugh

Physical distance won’t rule the way

We will connect, high-five, shake,

And the space between us will fill with friendship

We will embrace our neighbors, strangers, children,

And move without worry

We will touch, recover, hug each other

We will gaze together under the slightly larger asteroid from space,

And cry

We will wake with new vision, light, love, and faith

Within and without and between and about,

And the lights that have gone out

We still won’t like poetry

We will realize the line between need and want

How much we have,

And mourn

When the noise is gone,

And the lights have faded, the air has calmed

What will we have learned?

We will think twice before canceling plans to stay at home

We will learn to be fearless in the face of fear

Because our love for each other is stronger

We will be inclusive, joyful, and grateful

We will understand that a person’s worth is more than a paycheck or title

That everyone deserves health care and more than minimum

That retirement funds don’t trump well-being

Our planet will be graced with healing

Will we be who we were before?

Will we carry this experience for more than a moment?

Will we help the many people still hurting?

Will we take each other for granted?

Will we be happy with less, and willing to share?

Will we be ready to do this again?

Will we be still?

We will gather in restaurants and feed each other

Drink deeply, have date night, and get our hair done

Anybody want a peanut?

We will remember fear, sadness, strength, and peace

Meals with our families, Zooming together

Missing our teachers and students, learning at a distance,

And the power of art

We will get married,

And something else starts

We will remember when people asked us to share the first

Blue picture on our phones

We will no longer compare, divide, judge, and separate

We will take up the “vorpal sword” and fight the “slithy toves”

We will show some spine and shine

We will be political, civil, and responsible,

And we will admit when we were wrong,

And do better

We will all know how to wash our hands

The right way

We will have moments of life renewing change

We will have learned to savor the simple things

There will be a new normal

We will be proud of our choices and say, “This I did, this we did”

We will honor the heroes and be grateful

And see the world anew

  

Thank you to the poets who contributed to this piece: Chip Anderson, Matthew Aaron, Susan Adamo Baliles, Matt Barinholtz, Emily Anne, Hannah Benson, Eileen Berman, Christine Blevins, Sherri Bresn, Shenach Cameron, Roberta Cohen, Helen Crowley,  Marla Davis, Paul Degen, Allan Dorfman, Jessica Lensch Falk, Joel Finkle, Patricia Fragen, Abby Forman Gagerman, Susan Schaumberg Gorman, Audris Griffith,  Gerald Guglielmo, Leora Hatchwell, David Hirsch, Bevin Horn, Scott Horwitz, Debbie Hymen, Tracy Jacobson, Andrea Haynes Johnson, Maralyn Kolze, Audrey Cohn Levy, Eli Lovejoy, Susan Meredith, Suz Alaine, Ben Nick, Besflores Nievera Jr, Mary Vanderbeck Parker, Phil Patton, Julia Bauchner Roth, Marisa Roubik, Frances Salvato, Allison Grockis Schlender, Randy Schultz, Sheila Sebor, Jim Shepard, Danette Sills, Steven H Silver, Harry Steindler, Ryan Wiczer-Leist, and Marcy Wingard.

The story of this poem: Like our work to “flatten the curve,” this poem was a group project. It started as a post on Facebook. I asked my Facebook friends to write a list poem with me. I gave them the start, “When this is over…”  and they wrote beautifully!

All of their words form the word cloud image that accompanies the poem here. I took their words, found themes and repetitions, feelings and thoughts, and created this version of the poem. While not every phrase or sentence from every poet is included, I tried to include something from each poet’s contribution. I apologize if I have not done this as completely as some of the poets would want.

This poem does not have to be finished. Feel free to keep writing it – as a group, on your own, or any way that has meaning for you. It is not over.

Finding Poetry and the Man in the Chair

In the winter of 1996, I was struggling to help my Freshman English students understand and appreciate poetry. We were reading Romeo and Juliet, and Shakespeare felt concrete and foreign. Through an article in a professional journal, I stumbled on to the concept of “found poetry.”

Found poetry is verse created out ordinary everyday sources: product labels, cereal boxes, instruction manuals, and newspaper articles. The journal had an example of a poem by Julius Lester called “Parents” based an article from a paper in Arizona.

I presented the Lester poem to my students. Then I showed them two examples of my own: a piece written from a computer program manual and another based on a recent newspaper article.

The article was entitled “Hope grows on vines of love: Faith nourishes paralyzed teen, family.” It was about a high school hockey player who was paralyzed during a game and struggling to recover. I don’t remember my thoughts when selecting this article. I might have wanted a piece about teenager. It was in the “PrepsPlus” part of the Sunday paper, which I rarely read. In addition, the article has strong traditional religious overtones, which is hardly my style. It seems an unlikely selection.

Modeling the process for my students, I wrote a brief piece using the article as my found source:

Hope is where you find it.

O'Connor's eyes

are half open.

"I think I'm in a pretty good mood

for a kid with a broken neck."

hope has become

a finger twitch

"It's very slight,"

a flicker of movement

Doctors may know about

probability

but they don't know about building

hope

"it was just an accident"

"My arms looked

real far away. And my neck

hurt."

Ehhhhh, you're doomed

"It's hard sometimes"

He still has body spasms that frighten him.

"It's never going to get easy,"

it just tears your heart out

But not yet.

It could have been worse.

It isn’t much compared to Lester’s disturbing and professional poem. I figured I needed to show my students some sample found poems. Kids brought in things from menus to maps to magazines. We created all sorts of fun, interesting, and powerful poetry together.

And that was that. For seventeen years, I used this example and wrote a few others.

Then, I went to today’s annual charity drive assembly. Our school holds a big fund raising campaign between Thanksgiving and Winter Break. We have contributed to causes ranging from children with cancer to congenital heart defects to helping soldiers in Africa. This year’s charity helps disabled people engage in athletic activities.

The assembly began with our student council leaders. They talked about why they picked this group: the Great Lakes Adaptive Sports Association. They introduced the director and she spoke. Then a local mother of a child told her story.

Then they introduced the man in the wheelchair who had been sitting up front beside the podium: J.J. O’Connor. I recognized the name right away, but I wasn’t sure. I whispered to the teacher sitting next to me, “I wonder if he was paralyzed playing hockey.” Sure enough.

It was him: the boy in the article, seventeen years later. He found me. How unlikely! I was amazed.

I ran to my office and retrieved the poem. I couldn’t find the actual article until the end of the day. I got a copy of the poem and rushed back to the assembly, but it was almost time for my next class, so I left the auditorium as the assembly ended. I told my students about it, and they asked, “Why didn’t you go tell him?” My answer was simple, “Because I needed to come to class with you!”

I saw one of the student leaders after school, and he told me that J.J. O’Connor will be at the big charity benefit this Sunday. I’ll be there. I’ll bring the article, and the poem – and my thanks and admiration. I’ll find him again. How poetic!