This week’s poem is a love letter to all we have lost- to COVID, racism, climate change, and suicide. Tonight we lost Ruth Bader Ginsberg, breaking hearts across the nation and world.

Poet e. e. cummings broke all the laws of grammar and syntax to represent the things he most deeply thought and felt. His aesthetic tells us: you can make meaning out of chaos. Not only meaning, but also something beautiful and timeless, particularly if we remain true to what we think and feel. We must continue our creative and important lives.

Matsuo Basho and Nelson Mandela both make an appearance in this new poem by former U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera. Although their words seem somber at first, the poet writes that they are intended as "notes for your nourishment." The message? Telling the truth about life experience, and sharing clear-eyed wisdom with one another, is an act of caring.

What does it mean to belong? How do we signal to our patients, faculty, staff and trainees that each one belongs, and is welcome? That we see and hear them? Poet David Whyte, born to Irish and English parents, remind us that it is critical to try. He writes: There is no house like the house of belonging.

What must our children think as they watch the news? They see images of the shooting deaths of Black Americans, a devastating pandemic, angry politicians shouting into empty auditoriums, extreme weather, over and over. Poet Laureate Stanley Kunitz lived to be 101; his poem “Halley’s Comet” was written about his experience as a 5 year old boy, thinking the world was about to end. May we make the choices that will keep our children safe; may they live to be 101.

The COVID pandemic has ushered in a pandemic of anxiety. Patients and healthcare workers have struggled with PTSD, and many people are anxious about the ways their lives are changing, and might still change. While some anxiety can be productive, too much is destructive. Mary Oliver’s poem, “I Worried,” reminds the reader to lay it down and go “out into the morning.” Going out into the morning may mean literally opening your door and stepping outside, but sometimes it means reaching out to a friend or therapist.

Alex Dimitrov published this summertime poem in the New Yorker in 2018, before anyone could have imagined a masked and socially distanced summer, or the inability to gather for a simple summertime party. This poem will break your heart with its near-passé images from the NYC streets, but it will also remind you of what is constant: the desire for connection, the stubborn love of New York City, the passage of time. "There will never be more of summer than there is now."

Joy Harjo, the first Native American U.S. Poet Laureate, was recently appointed to a second term. Beginning September 1, she will collaborate with the Library of Congress's Geography and Map Division to create a StoryMap (a web mapping application geared towards storytelling) called "Living Nations, Living Words: A Map of First People's Poetry."

In this poem, Harjo creates a sense of place around a simple object: A kitchen table. The poem brings up important questions during this era of isolation: How do we gather? How will we pass important information from person to person? teacher to student? Parent to child? A poet cannot answer all these questions, but she can help us sit with their gravity and complexity.

As healthcare workers deemed “heroes,” everything we do and say becomes an example to our children, our community, and our trainees. It is a power not to be taken lightly. Li-Young Lee highlights the potential for teaching kindness through example in his poem “The Gift,” in which a boy receives love from his father, and as a man, repeats the same kindness with his wife.

In this poem, the narrator dreams of his summer getaway, describing it with love to the reader. This current summer, with nobody quite sure where they can safely go or how they should get there, it feels enormously relevant. It feels equally timely that the poet wishes for “a place for me that love has kept protected.”

This poem by Mary Oliver invites the reader to take a moment for “delight and gratitude," and reminds us that “It is a serious thing just to be alive.” She is right: so far we have made it through all that 2020 has delivered. It is indeed a serious—and amazing—thing.

This poem by Maya Angelou, which she recited at the 50th anniversary of the United Nations, is about the shortcomings, and the enormous potential, of the human race.  There is a way for us to be “the true wonder of the world,” she says— but “only when we come to it.”

There are no good adjectives for 2020. So often this year, I have written to check on friends and family and found myself at a loss for words. These ____ times. These ____ events. But the title of Jan Richardson’s poem is apt: Brokenhearted.

In this poem, Richardson acknowledges the pain of the moment, and asks us “to simply marvel at the mystery of how a heart so broken can go on beating.” Which it does.

Stuck at home during the shutdown, and now particularly touched by racial violence, the Alvin Ailey Dance Company put together this piece of spoken word performance art. Their creation beautifully captures their pain alongside their strength, hope, and resilience.

“When our hearts break,” they wrote, “We dance.”

Mary Oliver wrote this poem about the love she felt for her partner’s CPAP machine during her last days of life.  To help a person breathe is an act of compassion, courage, and love that many of us have undertaken in our work.  May we always work to make our patient’s lives better.  May we always provide the breath—literal and metaphoric—that they need.

On  Saturday night, I evaluated a girl with concern for a nasal foreign body.  "She can't breathe," said her mother.  I explained that her nasal turbinates were swollen.  "She still can't breathe," said her mother.  I wasn't sure what she was more afraid of-- Coronavirus, or raising her child in the current climate.  I gave her Nasonex, it was all I had.  There is so much more healing for us to do.

Thank you to Dr. Jerry Loughlin, our Chief of Pediatrics, and Dr. Joy Howell, Pediatric Critical Care Physician and Vice Chair for Diversity for sharing this poem.

Hallelujah, by Leonard Cohen, is a sorrowful lament about love and loss—emotions many of us have experienced during this time.  This Canadian virtual choir is completely unknown, but sometimes it’s the underdogs who disrupt your day and fill it with beauty.

This poem, published in the New Yorker last month, is perfect for sensory Saturday.  It brings you the chatter of magpies, a saxophone, and the smell of pinon crackling in a summertime campfire. 

Sliding down the better side of the curve, many of us have begun taking stock of our experiences. We know we have been changed forever. In this performance of WICKED’s “For Good,” Ginna Claire Mason and Lindsay Pearce sing: "Who can say if I’ve been changed for the better? I do believe I have been changed for the better." Maybe, in spite of everything, we have been too.

Thank you to Dr. Shari Platt for sending this link.