And the People Stayed Home

The word “disease” never appears in the poem, yet everything in its text is envisioned as a response to malady. The poem focuses on healing—which is needed when someone or something is unhealthy—and insinuates that the threat to the health of the earth and its human population is manifold. The most immediate danger is the COVID-19 pandemic, although its deadly impact was not fully realized until weeks after O’Meara wrote the poem in March 2020. Few people at the time suspected that the virus would globally kill millions of people.

The poem is a response to the early days of the pandemic, but it also implicitly addresses some entrenched social and environmental maladies. One of these is humanity’s increasing inability to concentrate and pay attention to what is nearby or within due to ceaseless news, social media, and anxious thought. That is why an important part of healing in the poem is being “still” (Line 3) and listening “more deeply” (Line 4), which implies a kind of mental tune-up enabling one to center themself and be genuinely present in engagement with others. Moreover, the idea that human healing would lead to healing the earth hints at the planet’s unhealthy environmental state, with pollution and climate change most readily coming to mind. Thus, the themes of disease and healing are multilayered, as the poem envisions not only the end of the pandemic but also a broader social transformation.