Forward

She’d been a nurse for a long time, but things were different now in the pandemic.

There was so much grief on both individual and national scales. It was a time of global mourning and yet there seemed to be no appropriate outlet—no special place, or day, or ritual to mark our losses as a human family.

She’d used words, poems, in the past as a writer and a reader, but now it seemed the best thing she could offer was silence and listening.

Listener Poet Mindy Shah

Salinas Valley Memorial Healthcare System

May 2022

Forward

Nurses cried who hadn’t

cried in decades.

I’m not a painter

or a sculptor-

all I have is words

and the lack of them

and in that space

I listen.

Have we grown soft?

I think of my grandma

born 1914. I think of forced

typhoid vaccines, and death.

Thoughts pass through,

then leave, and I inhale

to get spiritual footing,

and pray.

We can’t fix all

but we do need

to witness. Which is hard

with no place to mourn,

no funeral, no bedside vigil

as patients died alone.

And, as I said before,

no words.

I don’t want this poem

to make me cry.

Let it be a firm place

to put my foot

as we move forward,

eyes ahead.

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