Resilience as Weapon

Janelle Curlin-Taylor

November 30, 2021

For Loretta Diane Walker     

whose resilience gives me courage

Resilience:

#1 - The capability of a strained body to recover its size and shape after deformation caused especially by compression stress.

#2 -  An ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change.

Weapon:

#1 - Something (as a club, knife, or gun) used to injure, defeat, or destroy.

#2 - A means of contending against another.

If a weapon is something used to injure, defeat or destroy

Then resilience may not qualify.

If a weapon is a means of contending with another

Resilience may be the best.

To contend with is not necessarily

To destroy, defeat, or injure.

To contend with may be to

Maintain or assert.

To contend with may be to strive

against difficulties.

Is resilience a weapon?

Against disease, or poverty, or prejudice

Or harsh environments, or political turmoil?

The ability to recover or adjust.

The 11th Edition of the Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary

Inserts the adverb "easily" as to recover or adjust easily.

I protest.

Recovery is rarely easy.

Who would say they find it easy to adjust to CANCER

When the very cells of our bodies

Become the enemy.

As COVID variants continue to

Wreck havoc with human life, relationships, culture.

Adjusting easily?  Recovering easily? Makes no sense.

Long COVID-19 - a strange malady poorly understood

And, as yet, lacking a cure

May, all the same, be overcome, eventually.

Resilience: yes.  Easily: no.

A powerful disease indeed to make even

Merriam Webster blush.  Imagine!

Even our language must change.

Given these challenges

Resilience as practice seems the only weapon that may prevail.

Janelle Curlin-Taylor is descended from several generations of Texas poets, Janelle has turned her poetry into sermons for 30 years. Her poetry has appeared in The di-verse-City Anthology, Blue Hole, Best Austin Poetry 2018-2019, Waco Wordfest Anthology 2020 and 2021, Texas Poetry Calendar 2020, Tejascovido, and Texas Poetry Assignments. She is married to California poet Jeffrey Taylor.