I am trying yet again to organize my book collection while sheltered in place, and have turned up a forgotten nugget: "Good Poems for Hard Times," a collection of poems compiled by Garrison Keillor. He ends his introduction with these lines, "These poems describe a common life. It is good to know this. I hope you take courage from it." Agreed. The virus can rob us of much but it can never rob us of certain powers we possess. Here then are powers that poetry teaches that everyone has and that can never be stripped away. Ever.

Power No. 1: The Power of Being There

We despair. We ask ourselves: How can I make things better? I am not a first responder or a nurse or a Dr. Anthony Fauci. But we can make things better even if it is just being there for another. This sentiment is profoundly expressed in Gregory Djanikian's "Children's Hospital, Emergency Room." He takes his injured daughter to an emergency room:

You do not want to be here

You wish it were you

The doctor is stitching up

It is a cut on the chin, fixable

This time it is deep enough.

The father zones out, thinking there is nothing he can do to be of help. An outlier, an irrelevancy. Until the poem concludes:

When your daughter calls out it hurts

And things regain their angularity

The vulnerable opaqueness, I'm here

You say, Be still. I'm here.

Being present is often not just enough, but more than enough.

Power No. 2: The Power of Patience

Patience is not passivity, it is not waiting for events to roll you over. No, it is biding your time. Waiting for your shot, it is hoping for the best, preparing for the worst. Carl Sandburg taught us as much in "The Lawyer," a poem that resonates with many readers.

When the jury files in to deliver a verdict after weeks of direct and cross examinations,

hot clashes of lawyers and cool decisions of the judge,

 Sandburg continues:

A lawyer for the defense clears his throat and holds himself ready if the word is "Guilty" to enter motion for a new trial, speaking in a soft voice, speaking in a voice slightly colored with bitter wrongs mingled with monumental patience, speaking with mythic Atlas shoulders of many preposterous, unjust circumstances.

Lawyers are special people—we abide circumstances. The word "abide" is sprinkled throughout the Bible—it means to wait patiently. And in abiding, there is power.

Power No. 3: The Power of Acceptance

When I was trying cases I would sometimes in my opening statement tell the jury what the case was not about. Why? Because it is only human nature to hear a few statements and extrapolate a conclusion from them. Do let me state what I am not talking about here. I am not talking about servile acquiescence. I am not talking about mere acknowledgment. And I am certainly not talking about the pointless phrase, "it is what it is," which induces a thumb-sucking, infant-centric mindset.

Instead we must see reality as it is, not as we wish it to be. Only then can we overcome adversity. The late poet Galway Kinnell grasped this in his poem, "Prayer." It is an appropriately short poem:

Whatever happens. Whatever

what is is is what

I want. Only that. But that.

A prayer for clarity. A prayer to understand what reality is and not what we wish for reality to be. We can fix reality but we can't fix fantasy.

Power No. 4: The Power of the Moment

In Hopi culture, there is no word for the future nor for the past. Same with various languages, such as Hindi and Punjabi. We cannot be paralyzed by the past nor intimidated by the future. We can only live and act and plan in this moment.

Several years ago, I was really sick. I have no recollection of seven days over the holidays. Afterward on a cold and sunny January day I ate a hot egg roll, the best food I have ever eaten or will eat. I think of that day when I read Charles Bukowski's poem, "too sweet." He tells us about a good day he had at the track, slipping the valet a solid tip, and easing into traffic in his German car. Flipping on the radio, he listens to the familiar announcer. Along the last race, muses they will each leave the world's rough and tumble. But not today:

meanwhile, there is a certain rhythm

to the essentials that now need

attending to…

I decide not to die just

yet:

this good life just smells too

sweet.

Power No. 5: The Power of Connection

Humans crave connection. Without it, isolation and despondency take root; with it, solidarity and meaning take flight. Hard times compel us to seek out connection, Edward Hirsch writes of connection in his signature poem, "Memorandums" (it isn't in Keillor's anthology but fits in ideally):

I put down these memorandums of my affection

To stave off the absolute

To stave off the flat palm of the wind/ Pressed against the forehead

To stave off the thought of stars

Swallowed by the constellation of darkness.

Hirsch then catalogues his losses: mother, brother, grandparents who all loved him and helped him and died.

He pivots—as great poets always do—from the personal to the universal:

I put down these memorandums of my affection

… in honor of all those who have been

Conscripted into the brotherhood

of loss…

Isn't conscripted the exactly right word for our times?

Hirsch then delivers his transcendent message:

We will be lifted up and carried a far distance

On invisible wings

and then set down in an empty field

We will carry our hearts on our bodies

Over shadowy tunnels and bridges

Someday we will let them go again, like kites

A valuable worldview now more than ever.

So, valued reader, when this testing of us is over (and it will be but I know not when), and you spot me sipping a really cold vodka martini, or slicing up rare strip steak, or soaking up vitamin D on a rambling walk, come up and introduce yourself. And if I tell you to go fly a kite, I know you won't be offended.

Michael P. Maslanka is an assistant professor of law at UNT Dallas College of Law. His email is [email protected].