We Are Wire (Poets of the Pandemic)
By Kevin Hodgson
Look skyward at this hour to clock this moment - for our burdens are not equally distributed; the statistics break down
We need other people’s voices, for we are not born wired – We are Wire - calling through these faint networks toward the heart
When fear and loneliness seem to last an eternity, and in reversal, fragility; greater - this is when the outside looks most like empty streets, flat, with new calm
Maybe we still will bear witness to these mad dashes of love, imagining each stranger’s head crowned by a saint’s halo
All of us are somewhere, searching for Shalom; the window signs beckon us: We, the failed poets of the Pandemic -
the unstressed syllable the embodied rhythm the heartbeat a pulse
A Found Poem gathered from within: “Dispatches from the Pandemic” Via The New Yorker magazine, April 13, 2020, pages 34-49 Original writers: Ben Lerner, Rick Moody, Weike Wang, Vinson Cunningham, Lorrie Moore, Edwidge Danticat, Maggie Nelson, Donald Atrim, Karen Russell, and Bryan Washington
Audio: https://some.audio/5e942cb128d3ee0fa995101f
A response to the National Poetry Month prompt