For our second set of Poems of the Week, Anne Stewart shares a poem with us.
Anne says: “I write poetry because it helps me to understand how humanity works, and what’s going wrong when it doesn’t. I write to look for hope for the way forward. This poem was inspired by my niece, Joanne Wilmott, who was then training to be a paramedic, took on the role of First Responder, and is now a Patient Flow Coordinator with Yorkshire Ambulance Service.”
For a change
something innocent this way comes.
No learned cynicism, no imminent threat.
See it as some long-haired girl not tanned yet
looking to do some good in the world.
Maybe she wants to be a paramedic.
Bike it in fast to where only a bike can get.
She wants to save a body at least
if not a soul.
Let it be catching. Let it come to us all
like an infection.
Let it be this Local
this Determined
Unstoppable
as the saints and angels
of our every day.
We are the cells it needs
to go viral.
By Anne Stewart
First published in anthology, Poems for a Liminal Age, Sentinel
In collection, Let It Come to Us All, Integral & Contemporary Literature Press (2017, Bucharest)