stillness & the pandemic halo

As part of my healing and discovery through counseling and artistic expression, people were given the prompt of “contrast: light against darkness, curve and line, rough and smooth.” This poem, by Jim Moore, was the winning entry.

I love the stillness in this poem. (Notice stillness in something unexpected one evening this week.)

The Pandemic Halo 

by Jim Moore

The first time I saw it it was above the head 

of an old Lab. He was being walked as usual at 7 AM

by his young owner lots of lamppost stops, as usual.

There it was: faint at first, then hovering at a rakish tilt 

above the silky head. I thought maybe it was a weird trick of light -- 

the day was bright -- but then the next morning the nurse who parks 

across the street, in the now almost empty lot, was trotting along 

on her way to the clinic that is just below my window. She had it, too. 

I don't think she noticed it at all. She was moving quickly, late 

to work. I imagine That's what was on her mind not holiness.

The third day a young man in a red cap with a backpack slouched past,

I had never seen him before. You could see he was seriously depressed, 

looking down at the sidewalk. But there it was, firmly in place 

above him, so he couldn't see how beautiful

he really was. By now the pandemic halo is well recorded. 

We almost take it for granted, what once seemed so amazing.

After the pandemic is over, they say, the halo effect will disappear. 

They say we will return to life as usual. We won't need it. 

I have my doubts. I think we might need it more than ever. 

I think we might be saying things like, "Remember how incredible it was 

during the pandemic, how everyone had a halo, 

how grief and holiness were all we knew of the world  

and the sight of a dog at a lamppost could bring us to tears?"