Jo Ann Skousen takes on a poem that’s become popular during the coronavirus lockdown. From Skousen at forum.freedomfest.com:
If you have any presence on social media at all, you have surely seen Kitty O’Meara’s sentimental prose poem “And the People Stayed Home,” which has circled the globe faster than a corona virus in the past couple of weeks. O’Meara says that she had been feeling sad and anxious about the pandemic and the shutdown, and that writing the poem had a palliative effect. It has had a palliative effect on others, too; its calm intonations and hopeful message of a better future have resonated across the Internet. Because I teach poetry, many of my friends have sent it to me directly.
The words are often accompanied by a colorful folksy painting of a fox, a bear, and a girl, each cocooned in individual womblike sacks under the roots of a leafless tree, waiting for spring. In case you’ve been in a burrow somewhere without access to social media, here is the poem:
“And the people stayed home and read books, and listened, and rested, and exercised, and made art, and played games, and learned new ways of being, and were still. And listened more deeply. Some meditated, some prayed, some danced. Some met their shadows. And the people began to think differently.
“And the people healed. And, in the absence of people living in ignorant, dangerous, mindless, and heartless ways, the earth began to heal.
“And when the danger passed, and the people joined together again, they grieved their losses, and made new choices, and dreamed new images, and created new ways to live and heal the earth fully, as they had been healed.”
~Kitty O’Meara
I understand the attraction to this poem. It’s calm and cozy and peaceful, almost like a glass of warm milk before going to bed. It has brought comfort and reassurance to countless people who have posted and shared and liked it and rewritten versions of their own. I’m happy for them. It’s always good to look for the silver lining in situations we can’t change. I’ve been doing that too.
