Disaster Number 4498
requires a death certificate,
cause clearly stated;
an invoice, itemized,
the date of our disaster —
your demise — the cost
of which can be
deftly monetized in
America, where
any harm may be
codified, indemnified
in that coarse ledger,
as if we should be, could be,
compensated, reparated;
our fragments
made whole.
Dear FEMA, transacting
loss in your profane tongue,
the only language you know:
We are not ungrateful;
no one is buried cheaply
in these United States. Yet
we are more consoled
by the casserole left on
the stoop, how it
pretends nothing;
the honesty of its mute
and humble inadequacy.
Meditatio Ephemera 
A sad reality … one of several COVID-triggered awarenesses. I’m starting to sound like my parents did years back referring to the “good old days” … alas, there is no gear to shift into reverse on this planet …. and today’s youth will eventually think 2020s were the “good old days”. Sad.
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It IS true, isn’t it? As we move through various phases of our lives, we adopt perspectives different from those of our youth, and start to understand why our parents and grandparents felt as they did.
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Well said, Cate. Humanity ends when everything is assigned a dollar amount. There are times when I fear we may be closer than we hope.
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Thanks, Russ. At a core level, I find the notion of reparations curiously … ignorant. Money can certainly help people as a practical matter, which perhaps I undervalue as someone who is not poor. Still, there’s this implication — life shouldn’t happen to us — that just doesn’t sit well with me. Life does happen to us, and that cannot — and should not, I somehow feel — be something for which we are compensated in money. This is life in all its messiness. Nothing is wrong.
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