#429: My Friend the Media Specialist (a poem on April 22, 2022)

My friend the media specialist
(we used to call them librarians)
gifted me this morning a
prompt for a poem.

My friend the media specialist
says the word “precarity”
might make a good subject.
“Precarity,” I say. “Is that like
the feeling or state of precariousness?”

My friend the media specialist
says, “Yes, precarious, uncertain,
tentative, vulnerable, transitory,
dependent on chance.”

My friend the media specialist
and I talk for awhile about
the way precarity, especially now,
seems ever present. Hasn’t it
always been this way? Maybe,
but it feels to be more so now.

My friend the media specialist
and I are both living through moments
of great shifting, personally,
and our community, the country, too,
and even the world seem to be
on the verge of a precarity
of seismic proportions.

“And yet,” my friend the media specialist says,
“here we are, doing our thing, living our lives,
moving forward, holding on or holding steady,
somehow hopeful, perhaps, that our
own precarious states may not end
disastrously. Isn’t that something?”

My friend the media specialist goes
back to her work and I go back to mine,
but then, on this day, not an hour later,
my work day takes a precarious turn
in a classroom activity that goes awry.
Everything hinged for a moment on
one very tense and difficult exchange;
the whole thing broke down around me.

My friend the media specialist
has no idea how prescient was her visit,
no idea how absolutely essential was her
gift of the prompt for a poem. And yet,
again, here we are, holding on
and holding steady, in precarity.