Some of us are lucky. We can swim
in a lake. We can walk on a dirt road.
Some of us live on the ninth floor, where
air recirculates and the city below
pounds on. In the heat. Some of us hardly
leave the apartment. Sometimes friends
shop for us, or we go to the crowded
store anyway. Anyway, a person has
to eat. Some of us work Pick-Up-&-Delivery
for the grocery. For auto parts. Some work
check-out at Walmart, where some shoppers
don’t wear masks. Some of us are delivering
babies in Philadelphia. Some are slaughtering
hogs in Iowa City. Some are teaching thirty
fourth-graders on Zoom. Some are stocking
pallets in massive warehouses in Mobile, Joliet, LA—
and some of us are driving across the country
in rented campers with three kids and a dog
because we think the summer is our chance
to move before the world stops again.
Robin Becker, a professor emeritus at Penn State University, is the author of eight poetry collections, including All-American Girl, for which she received the Lambda Award in Poetry, and The Black Bear Inside Me.
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