— for Alex, a nurse I met who is also a poet, and all nurses
I heard that you are a poet
and a nurse. I imagine all the nurses who also
are something else—a chef, a Mom, a painter… a race car driver.
I want to image your life, this poet – and a nurse, in the middle of a pandemic.
I want to appreciate your life—and your stewardship of life and earth and what is in between.
I never knew nurses took an oath.
And I was a friend’s nurse graduation
at Royce Hall at UCLA, where we had both been to school, and when the
graduating class read the oath for nurses,
all throughout the auditorium nurses
stood up and said the oath with them. So, moving. So surprising.
I loved those nurses, nurses rising, and committing to their oath again.
And again, at every graduation they go to, they say the oath.
Bless those nurses, I thought. So grateful for your service. Continue reading “Poem: An Ode for Nurses during a Pandemic by Marie Cartier”
When I wrote Murder at the Rummage Sale, my agent warned: “You have to have a sequel in mind!” I was supposed to write a second domestic cozy, same setting, same characters, different victim. But what came to mind was a memory. When I was a troubled teen visiting England, my uncle gave me a map and let me go sightseeing in London on my own. It was early winter 1968, the war in Vietnam was raging. I did not want to be an American; so I faked an accent, wore an eccentric hat, and called myself Eliza Doolittle. When a man picked me up, I did not know how to break out of character. I ended up drunk in his flat. I just managed to fight off rape. The man must have figured out that I didn’t add up and could land him in trouble. He took me back to my uncle’s office. The kernel for All the Perils of this Night is: what if he hadn’t? What if, like so many others, I had been trafficked? I couldn’t shake that “what if.” So I wrote the standalone sequel, no domestic cozy but what I would call a numinous thriller. 
I woke up this morning with a terrible itch in my mind. I want to sue the government. I’m not a lawyer, at least not yet, and I know that governments have sovereign immunity that typically prevents them from being sued. But, it didn’t and doesn’t seem right that I feel so lied to and unprotected during this pandemic. What is more, I know I am not deluded. Either it is bad or it isn’t. Either it is spreading and lethal, or it isn’t. Either precautions help, or they don’t. It can’t be that ambiguous from a viral-behavioral perspective. Government leadership refuses to speak or model a consistent, truthful, and accountable model for the social welfare, leading to such absurd reductions (in Ohio, for example) as that each individual school child can decide whether s/he wants to wear a face-covering this fall. So, what gives? Why all the half-, mixed, mis-, and disinformation?
For the past four Sunday afternoons, I’ve walked along Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia, to observe firsthand the changes happening to the statues of Confederate generals placed there a century or so ago. I focus here on the Robert E. Lee statue. Robert E. Lee (1807-1870) “…was an American Confederate general best known as a commander of the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War” (Wikipedia). These days, Lee’s statue seems to be home base for activists who are working diligently to keep protests and demonstrations ongoing, yet peaceful.
“I think you should take medication for anxiety.”
Sara is a naturalist, ethologist ( a person who studies animals in their natural habitats) (former) Jungian Pattern Analyst, and a writer. She publishes her work regularly in a number of different venues and is presently living in Maine.
As Pride Month and Black Lives Matter protests co-exist, the spirituality of queer women of color teaches white allies how to listen.
