Poets from Kent State University and the Wicke Poetry Center have created a beautiful community-driven project: writing a global vaccine poem.
https://communitypoems.org/global-vaccine-poem
The project was kicked off with a poem by San Antonio’s own Naomi Shihab Nye. At the website, you can contribute a line–or a few stanzas–to the poem, and they immediately pop up on the gallery.
Here is a stanza I love, from Candace Perkins Bowen’s piece:
It’s the touch of the paper-thin skin of my mother’s hand that I miss … and the tiny, red fist of my newborn granddaughter I have never been able to touch….. Those are what’s missing from my life….
Or this, from contributor Dave Stow:
it’s the knowing how lucky I’ve been/but the luck not being universal/but the vaccine brings it together.
Check the poem out and contribute here: https://communitypoems.org/global-vaccine-poem
Image credit: Ronny Stewart MD
Pan Pals, from the Center for Medical Humanities and Ethics 