When we find a vaccine for each other’s fears and denial.
STEPPING OUT BY GLENN MOSS 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 77
In this Winter and Spring of our collective infection and disconnect
Windows and faces covered with masks and polar bear dust
I stare at my home page, hoping for a link I can trust
I once believed Harry Nilsson
And thought the Lord must be in New York City
Now I’m told it’s a viral Reaper
Shambling into frightened mouths and overstuffed ERs
I think I’ll look across the street
There’s a tree that weathered Hurricane Sandy
A good place to start if I could get out
“Out” is such a damn fine word
I take off my shoe and sock, rub my foot on the floor
Imagine I feel a tree root
Fixed and faithful
Fading light traces the lines of a young woman
Walking into the dusk on 86th Street
Teasing my gaze into some tomorrow
When we find a vaccine for each other’s fears and denial
GLENN MOSS
As a child growing up with too many dramatic and emotionally volatile people, my major response and adaptation was to develop such a severe stutter that I spent most of my days in isolation, silence, and fear. While there were many obvious downsides to this, the one core and lasting upside for me was developing a free imagination and interior dialogue. Walking around Brooklyn and Manhattan alone, I stored images, sounds, and words I used to construct wildly varied imagined lives filled with speech, adventure, travel, and love. Words, language, and image became my passport to the next day and to a larger world. In college I wrote poems and even a Shakespeare-like five-act play for a course in Jacobean lit. Writing became who I was no matter what adjustments I made to life, like going to law school and becoming a lawyer. In law school I wrote a play for a course in jurisprudence and as far as I know I was the only law student who ever did this. As a working lawyer I used my poetry and stories as a platform to write better contracts, ones that were touched by a bit of language, music, and dance. So, imagination and writing are the sources of my survival, growth, adaptation, and success.