(I am participating in the March Slice of Life challenge via the Two Writing Teachers site. Slice of Life is the idea of noticing the small moments. I have been a participant for many years and each year, I wonder if I will have the energy to write every day. This year, I am going to try to coincide it with my daily poetry writing, and intend to compose small poems on small moments. We’ll see how it goes …)
I have mostly been avoiding any context for my Slice of Life poems this month, hoping the words will surface the moments that inspire the verse. But with the temporary closure of our school, and many others around us and in the country and world, I can’t help but think about the divide between the Haves and the Have-Nots, and those kids who need school as a safe place, as a place for regular meals, as a place for connecting with peers. And how summer vacations and other breaks are not seen as something to look forward to but something to dread. I think a lot about those kids. They’re all our children. – Kevin
Day Fourteen
Whose children
will awake in uncertain
days, only to wonder
whether it is better
to save breakfast for lunch,
or lunch for breakfast,
for one is now the other
until otherwise notified?Our Children
Whose children
will worry about neighbors
on all of our behalf —
the elderly, the sick,
the lost and lonely,
the forgotten cul de sacs
of community —
the not knowing
more unsettling than
the knowing itself?Our Children
Whose children
will spend their time
in unforced silence –
a collective quiet beyond
the hum of youthful noise
on the tail of social distancing –
neither connected nor rejected
but reflected in reality
that home might be
the loneliest place to be?All Our Children
Peace (reaching out),
Kevin