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Community Inspirations : Poetry by Maya Stein

For the first feature in our new blog series, “Community Inspirations”, we wanted to share some poetry that resonated with our team as we begin to reopen our community. Now that Edenwald’s Dining rooms are once again open for business and we begin to see glimpses of the hustle and bustle that we love so much from our community, we also take the time to reflect on the journey that we have all taken together.

Our president, Mark Beggs, shared the poem below with the Edenwald community as we began our re-opening process. Maya Stein’s words are such a poignant reminder of all we have accomplished despite the unprecedented circumstances.

“When We Get Through This” – Maya Stein

When we get through this, I want us to set a table with all of the loaves of bread

we’d practiced in our quiet houses. I want us clutching fistfuls of the cilantro we coaxed

from our city windowsills, and I want the nascent musicians, the ones who learned

old songs on their new ukuleles, or warbled choruses on isolated balconies, to take

the stage together. I want all the knitted, crocheted, stitched, and mended things pooled

at our feet, warming our ankles. I want us to greet each other in unfamiliar languages,

to tell the stories of those who have been lost. I want us to look, in unison,
toward the world millions of miles and light-years away, to take in what is before us,

and beyond us. I want us to wake to the magnitude of our fortune against the smallness

of our time. And then I want us to remember this, and to keep remembering.

—

So as we look forward to the future full of the social lives we crave, let us keep remembering.