At this age, 79, I am often thought of and often think of myself in terms of a cliché, “Set in his ways”. It is as though my brain is locked in concrete paths of thought and doesn’t experience each day as it is – the changing world and, God forbid, my own changing life each moment. The coronavirus world is like this. It changes daily. I read of rising disease and death rates and the itch to get back to “normal” life.
The Covid-19 pandemic reveals the deep under-life of what it means to be an American or not to be an American, to be a small child, a parent, an immigrant, a prisoner forced into close company with others, especially the sick and dying. In essence, we are staring at the understanding we all share as people on this continent. I have heard so many times that “Covid-19 respects no boundaries.” It’s right there with my own illnesses of heart failure and cancer: “Well, we all have to die sometime”.
I began walking again about two weeks ago. This locked down sedentary life, sitting with this laptop, had reduced rising from a chair to a major breathless chore. I wear a double-thickness mask outside and will until a good vaccine comes. Yet, there is not much evidence that a mask does more than protect YOU when I am in public. So, I will look silly long past the time when my Pittsboro neighbors have gone clean-faced as they go about their lives. And long past when Jordan Lake beach has opened at the behest of your petitions to Gov. Cooper. I neither agree nor disagree.
Your children are at risk. Period.
A Day In 1963
by brad Page
Words speak out of time,
Memories capture this moment.
Words ask for more
Than what is possible.
And they know no limits.
And all possibilities
Arise and cease in
Detours to sorrow.
Oh, we know how it goes.
Move on, they say…
Mick is gone from us,
His Michael-presence
Gone to ground
To the forever grave
That swallows his
Past, future,
Our moments together
She grieves,
Her infant now silent pain.
Rivulets of tears on
Frozen-shocked face.
At graveside she beckons the lost child,
So encased, remote.
Her child-husband trembles
Before her agony,
His bewilderment
And other losses, to come.
Move on, they say…
Lest we miss
New bitter tragedies,
I hear.
We are young
And strong.
Pain is weakness after all,
They say.
Date: Wed, 13 May 2020 12:53:42 -0400
From: Brad Page
Subject: Petitions to play