Robert Wagner Poet Free verse

Notes About The Poem

All of my children are essential workers and have been working throughout this pandemic. One installs floors, another works in a grocery store, and my other two children work in a State Veterans Home and the largest hospital in Minneapolis. My wife is a retired RN. So often we define "heroes" as military heroes, those who charge up San Juan Hill or raise the flag on Iwo Jima. In this pandemic, I have seen those whom we generally think of impervious to harm and are in the greatest physical health, destroyed by a virus is that microscoptic. I think of the many who work in our medical clinics, nurses, doctors, maintenance, etc and all our first responders who daily fight this pandemic in order to save lives. This virus has redefined what heroism is. This is reflected in this poem.
 

A Nocturne For Our Medical Heroes

A NOCTURNE FOR OUR MEDICAL HEROES
Literature is filled
With narratives of
Individual and collective
Acts of heroism.
The shining armor
Of righteous knights,
The Robin Hoods’
Of world history,
Bandolier draped chests,
Fighting a heartless
World that preys
Upon the powerless
Trapped in poverty.

We search the horizon
For visions of soldiers
Bravely raising a flag
On an embattled hill.
We seek for leadership
In an absentee government,
To find only a vapid vacuum
Of intelligence, draped
In self-indulgence.
and corruption,
spreading as easily
and as deadly,
as the pestilence that
is killing humanity.

“Where are our heroes?”
Where is the new Moses
To rise among us, 
To protect and lead
Us from our wandering
In this desert of death.
One, for whom the good
Of the many out weighs
Personal ambition
And self-gain?
To whom can we
Entrust our lives,
And the lives
Of those we love?

Rescuers arrive,
Draped in the soft cloth
Of medical scrubs,
EMT uniforms,
Armed only with
Bandoliers of compassion,
Love, and self-less service
And a stethoscope, 
A mask and face shield.
Their hearts emblazoned
With the words,
“There is no greater love
Than to lay down
One’s life for a friend,”

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