farewell: a sunday swaggers challenge

Back in maybe January, when I set the monthly challenge for our poets' group, the world seemed, you know, normal. Regular. Ordinarily challenging, simultaneously bitter and gorgeous...normal.

Now as we face our June poetry challenge, I think I speak for all of us when I say we are shook.  Yes, through March, April and May we were consumed by the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic quarantine online school family displacement disturbing public discourse--but by the end of May we had, as humans do, come into some place of routine.

And then--not for everyone, some of whom live in this upside down all day every day--the world turned upside down again as we watched in horror as once again, twice again, [threefourtentwentyfifty toomanytocount] Black lives were taken before our eyes.

So now the challenge I set back in January, to write a poem of farewell to anyone or anything--which I thought appropriate to the end of a normal regular school year--has even more possibility built in.  

I wrote a duplex last week which was a worthy challenge.  It's not explicitly a poem of farewell, but it is the beginning of goodbye to the belief that "not being racist" is enough.   The inauguration line is a link to this moment from the TV show Black-ish.

<poem>

But there's so much, so many more, to bid farewell to.  It's time to say goodbye to the 5th graders from my school, many of whom I've known for their whole [school] lives.

I hope this poem captures the odd challenge of this year and the heartfelt connections that will last long past this pandemic.

The Time We've Had

It's hard to say goodbye

      when you haven't said hello 

for weeks and weeks--not really.

I squeeze my own self tight

      and throw a hug through screens--

I mean it but it feels kind of silly.

Kind of silly, kind of sad,

     but this is the year we've had 

and now it's ending--this is it.

And here's the thing I've learned

     from twelve weeks of online learning--

        if you need me, I am here

        if I miss you, you are there

        

and the time that we have shared

      has marked our hearts with burning--

just a bit.

draft © Heidi Mordhorst 2020

Thanks to our own Margaret at Reflections on the Teche for hosting today, and let's see what the rest of the Swaggers decided to bid farewell to!