Cassandra Welch
To Hell With It
I dream of the mountain’s dew on a truck windshield collecting
I dream of the colours of the dawning sky: pinks and purples changing into blue
I dream of the surge of excitement an oil girl feels as helicopters come in in seismic to meet me
At the ground, while I sit, “coolly, indifferently” waiting for them to come
As though I never made a misturn, as though I never feared bad things
Like wolves, Hydrogen Sulfide, bears, injury or Rapid Body Transport.
I dream of the longevity of an industry that government has sanctioned as an essential service
In the face of calamity called a virus
I dream of the world diving in at me in Northern BC, Canada,
While I work the front lines of Health Care as a Social Service Worker and Social Worker
Helping the men of my old industry push themselves further than most can push when they fall
To get there I have two choices: let the other health care workers fight Covid-19 or join in
So I will fight the lions, as a front-line worker, to get it all back
Until I can dream for more, even if I go down
Because sitting in a chair, while my friends might contract it, while we all might carry it already
I would rather be the front-line between hell and forever
I would rather take on a demons of this world, letting my fire burn out this twilight.
There are those who feel empowered on the frontlines,
No matter their height, this time, this fight, this fight, is not a flight for me
It is the fight I fought in the northern bush, and the fight I fight to get it all back
The men, the bush, the Field, the hell found in drills on a lease-floor, which cools and waits
For the front-line workers, the world over, to take over
While the men wait, wait out this new fight
And when it ends, whether I go and join in
When the dusk cools out the gloom of this fever
The men chomp down, restless to do what they are want to do: fight
Work their asses off, to deliver the product that takes their youth
Takes their souls, uses their spirit despite the larger world’s stifled scorn.
—Submitted on 03/24/2020
Cassandra Welch was selected for the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing Poetry Fellowship in 2020 (which she declined to attend university). She holds a personal support worker certificate from St. Clair College in Windsor, Ontario, and attended Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, British Columbia. Welch will begin Fanshawe College in London, Ontario, in the fall of 2020 to pursue a social service worker diploma, and plans to head to Western Canada afterward.
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