May 29, 2020. Minneapolis.
“I can’t breathe,”
George Floyd gasps,
hearty, Black, and then dead
from a white policeman’s knee on his neck.
May 29, 2020. New York City.
Amy Cooper, white,
loses her job for calling 911,
her “life threatened!” she insists,
by Christian Cooper, Black,
an innocent birdwatcher in Central Park.
Corona victims everywhere
gasp, “I can’t breathe,”
threatened, knowing their ventilators
may not be enough.
It’s hard for all of us to breathe,
threatened, afraid,
at war not only
with Covid-19
but also with a racism
so ugly and deep
that even to begin
to think of it
I can hardly breathe,
and that is our job:
to breathe.
To choose
Life.
by Jane Marla Robbins