(for our Frontline Heroes)

during milder weather when breezes
lifted leaves into blurs of swinging
greens and gold-white spark
I would say I am strong
swatting the helpful hand away
sparing the uninvested ear to counsel
instruction I thought needless
till zephyr gave way to sweep and gust
and I met them in the storm of a century
that bent my knees to suffering
          a throng of levees against surge
and flood—call them heroes—Cristina,
Alex, Kasey, Sasha, Claudia, Adrienne,
Barbara, Steph, and an army more
taught by example how to hope under
thunder-green skies of viral clots between
heart and lung, the pneumonic wheeze
and plead for air they left behind
          Marie daily took mop and life
in hand, sanitizing rooms on the floor
sharing prayers for her own stricken
sister and calling me “friend”
          Danielle raised bedside manner
up levels of personal care promising she’ll
read my poems at home to family, friends
          Richard gifted his wife a kidney
and the rest of himself to helping “fill a need”
like mine, like that of a countless to come
          and Cassie
Cassie followed the rule—“can’t hold
my patient’s hand”—yet managed
to cradle this heart when lost in gales
of cough and blood, then nurse it
back to a healing calm . . .
          every story revealed the grace
in greeting life anew each morning
in letting it go for any night’s peace
and today when the song they played
for COVID survivors filled the halls for me,
I heard victory in Here Comes the Sun
          my storm had given way to its shine
allowing me the witness that it’s often
in our weakness we prove most fit
to say I am strong

A Note on “Here Comes the Sun”: I wrote “Here Comes the Sun” to express my admiration and gratitude for the varied and numerous healthcare professionals, technicians, and staff at HUP (the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania). They provided for my mother and me the finest care as in- and outpatients during five weeks plus of intense recovery from COVID-19 last summer. Though Mom and I could neither receive visitors from home, nor visit each other while in the hospital, our doctors, nurses, technicians, environment and maintenance specialists, therapists, chaplains, even transport found ways to reach beyond their PPE and share with us the people they are, so that we never felt alone. And even in our tenth month of recovery, Mom and I still have hope and joy, which is largely due to these dedicated professionals who can never know how very much we owe them. Still, E-Verse Radio is a local treasure with an ever-widening audience, and I hope that seeing this poem in its digital pages will be for our frontline heroes a strong and lasting source of encouragement and support.

Olga Dugan is a Cave Canem poet. Nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart prizes, her award-winning poems are forthcoming or appear in Channel (Ireland), Relief: A Journal of Art and Faith, The Windhover, The Sunlight Press, E-Verse Radio, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Southern Quarterly, Kweli, Ekphrastic Review, Tipton Poetry, Typehouse Literary Magazine, Peacock Journal, Origins, Poems from Pandemia: An Anthology, Cave Canem Anthology: XIII, and Red Moon Anthology of Modern English Haiku. Articles on poetry and cultural memory appear in The Journal of African American History, The North Star, and in Emory University’s “Meet the Fellows.”