Welcome to WNIJ's Poetically Yours. Poetically Yours showcases poems by northern Illinois poets. This week's poem is by Cheryl Sheinman.
Sheinman is a teacher and dialogue facilitator. Being a graduate of Jungian and archetypal psychology, she writes about bringing consciousness to our social landscape via pieces on voice, justice, trauma, death and dying, gun violence and authentic dialogue.
She enjoys tennis, swimming, snow skiing, art, literature, design and fashion. Sheinman said she appreciates nature and the flora and fauna of the Forest City. A recent transplant from Miami, Florida to Rockford, she survived the Illinois winter of 2019, learning to move like a penguin on the ice!
Sheinman is also working on her memoir.
Sheinman writes about COVID-19 in her poem "Gasping for Air...in COVID Care."
Where or where, where
is my Becky? My wife, my
love, my beautiful Becky… her
light blue eyes and
soft grey curls, her
skin, so familiar, like a graft off
my own, feels like home.
I need her now, I need
to see her face, her
doleful eyes looking
back at me, reflecting my
despair, my descent, my
demise, The decree…
coming for me
like a suffocating specter.
I need her hand to
hold, a tether to a
life raft that will lift me
up and into her
breathable boat. A
boat where air,
like water, just flows.
Who are these people
that look like aliens?
These health “care”
workers with covered faces,
gloved hands and crinkly capes
hovering over me? Turning me,
placing me prone, bringing me back to
breath that was once just
given, breath that came easy.
Are they angels here
to shepherd me to there? They
are kind, these faceless strangers,
but where is my mother?
Where are you mom? I need
you now, I need you so badly. I
need you to tell me everything’s
going to be alright. To look at me
in the way that only a
mother can, the way a
mother looks at a son and
knows, the way a son looks
back and is met by that
knowing. Cradled in your gaze, I
am less alone, held by your watch-
fullness over me.
But you can’t be here now and
I already know that it’s not alright,
but want to hear it anyway
and from you, that
the pain will lessen, that
it will all be over soon.
And Becky. I long for
her hand in mine, her eyes to soothe
me to sleep, her voice to tell
me it’s ok to let go and
the touch of her bare
skinned hand to
bring me back.
Back to where
I’m headed, back
home to breath
once instilled in me
automatic, effortless, recurring
and given out for free.
- Yvonne Boose is a 2020 corps member for Report for America, an initiative of the GroundTruth Project. It's a national service program that places talented journalists in local newsrooms like WNIJ. You can learn more about Report for America at wnij.org.
