Who Holds It All?

When you wake up to a new and terrifying reality
When everywhere you look you see maps and charts
Displaying what feels like an inexorable progression of sickness and death
When your crops are being devoured by locusts
And you wonder if you will be able feed your children
When you look at a smoggy sky,
garbage washing up on the shore
Tearful and heartbroken about the earth’s destruction
When you awaken in the night, short of breath
Struggling to inhale
When your throat is sore, and your head feels hot
Thinking “Is this IT?”
When you’re in a hospital bed attached to multiple devices
Terrified and not knowing where you are
When you’re waiting at home for news of a loved one
When no one will answer your calls and you can’t visit
When you work in the hospital every day
Always aware of the risk of contagion
When you enter a store and feel the terror
Of getting too close to others, touching anything
When your job puts you in danger everyday
But you can’t support yourself without a paycheck
When you’re homeless, vulnerable, scared, forgotten
When you’re in an immigrant detention center
A nursing home, a home for the mentally or physically disabled
Understaffed and people around you getting really sick

Overcome by the enormity of it all
Is it possible for us to finally awaken?
To our universal interconnectedness
A connectedness of spirit, of compassion
That holds it all
Gerry Oliva
April 11, 2020