On this early September morning the neighborhood is loud with children
posing for pictures in driveways, waving from bus steps, adjusting new masks,
nodding to the driver in gloves and shield, settling into Lysol-scented seats
and now parents wave as the yellow bus moves to the next driveway
and the scene repeats. Leaving pods of parents waving in the distance,
a lawn's length between them, the roar and stop, roar and stop receding
down the tree-lined road. No parades this year growing at each driveway
and pausing at street's end for the group photo of jostling children
scoping out the new year's pecking order, showing off new backpacks, lost teeth.
No parents mingling outside the school, inhaling the hope of a new year,
exhaling the sadness of a summer gone. No chatter as they return to their offices
and their errands past straggly tomato plants, weary-leaved maples and oaks.
This year they mourn in solitude or in pairs, take the steps back to their desks
and monitors, stopping first to wash their hands as they sing a little song.
Jack Powers is the author of Everybody’s Vaguely Familiar and has had poems in The Southern Review, The Cortland Review, Red Eft Review and elsewhere. He won the 2015 and 2012 Connecticut River Review Poetry Contests and was a finalist for the 2013 and 2014 Rattle Poetry Prizes. He recently retired from teaching special education in Redding, Connecticut. Visit his website: http://www.jackpowers13.com/poetry/.
Jack, you captured "a day in the life" of school children and their parents in the Age of Covid so eloquently. You beautifully capture the sense of longing for those halcyon days that seem like a dream now, as well as the overwhelming, almost stifling weariness that weighs on us like a heavy, wet blanket; and of the necessity of having to "carry on" in a world that we hardly recognize. If there is a silver lining in all of this bleakness, perhaps it will be that AFTER the Age of Covid, we will have a heightened sense of gratitude for all the little things that we took so much for granted. And that will be a good thing.
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