This

Another one. I knew her name.
I knew her family, her children, her mother.
I knew the sparkle in her eye, her humor,
her faith. I see the pain as it extends, spider like
to all who knew her.

This, This is stronger than statistics.
The pain. The struggle. The loss,
Each multiplied. This.

There is hope ahead. I know it.
The headlines proclaim it. It is real.
But so it this. A brutal reminder
the echoes through your gut and tears.

This. The need still to care,
one for the other, beyond the disease,
beyond the hope, to the now.
To this.

About this poem.

This poem actually started out with the weather. It was going to be called “Sunny and Five Degrees”, and be about the difference between what we often see and show on the outside versus what we often are on the inside. I don’t know what happened to that poem, but this one showed up instead.

It is not about a specific, recent, close to me death. It comes instead from the continued loss that others around me are experiencing as the people we love continue to die from the coronavirus. It truly is far more than statistics.

The picture was taken not far from my house.

Tom