Thursday, April 16, 2020

IT’S NOT WISE TO FOOL WITH MOTHER NATURE—FOCUS ON PATIENCE

Focus, people, focus ...
Focus on what?
Focus upon every person’s responsibility to
Face up to the same stark reality that’s
Staring medical teams across
Our nation in the face, scaring
Highly trained doctors, PAs
Nurses, technicians and aides
Day after day after day—
We, who are so fortunate as to
Remain relatively safe at home, cannot
Fool ourselves into
Believing‘trumped’ up lies
Suggesting that the end of this
Global pandemic can be
Scheduled in hopes of
Saving our economy from tanking at
The expense of countless lives lost—not
Just the lives of strangers but of
Your loved ones and mine, being that
Covid-19, like the fickle finger of fate
Will continue to run rampant through
Our streets, killing at will, unless
Leadership grows so wise, over night
(Yeah right!) As to—
“Adopt the pace of nature—her secret is patience.”
         —Ralph Waldo Emerson

My nephew is an ER doc in the Midwest, and here is his fear—“The idea of bringing something home that’s going to hurt my family ... (Covid-19) has this level of transmissibility that’s a new experience for me.”
My nephew, being a former firefighter, paramedic, does not shrink back from having a scary job.  At the risk of his own life, he chose to run into burning buildings (while others ran out) in hopes of saving a person too overcome to get out without help.  Even so, each time my nephew placed the safety of others above his own, never before has he experienced sound reason to fear for the safety of his wife and four children as is true, now, each time he walks into their home after having spent long hours in the ER, attending to the health needs of strangers, and as such, along with the new normal comes this scary awareness—
“Fires don't chase firemen home,” he said. “But this bug chases lots of folks home, and that's a new reality.”
And so, while we keep my nephew’s highly trained, insight-driven train of thought in the forefront of our minds, let’s acknowledge sound reason to repeat this life-saving refrain, every day:
Focus, people, focus ...
Focus on what?
Focus upon every person’s responsibility to
Face up to the stark reality
Staring medical teams across
Our nation in the face, scaring
Highly trained doctors, PAs
Nurses, technicians and aides
Day after day after day—
We, who are so fortunate as to
Remain relatively safe at home, cannot
Fool ourselves into
Believing lies trumped up
By trump, suggesting that
The end of this
Global pandemic can be
Scheduled in hopes of
Saving our economy from tanking at
The expense of countless lives lost—not
Just the lives of strangers but of
Your loved ones and mine being that
Covid-19, like the fickle finger of fate
Will continue to run rampant through
Our streets, killing at will unless
Leadership grows so wise, over night
(Yeah, right!)As to—
“Adopt the pace of nature—her secret is patience.”
         —Ralph Waldo Emerson

No comments:

Post a Comment