Life's Hero in a Pandemic, Poetry Submission #1, Ann WJ White

My mother sits in her living room,
polishing grave stones from afar. 
She paces back and forth on worn carpet,
exercising her legs and mind.
The photos she takes from the window
highlight trees falling on the parking lot,
worn people wearing masks, and there on the edge,
a man with a butcher knife yelling that
life isn't fair. Part of the neighborhood
watch, she calls the police, then walks down
four flights, her mask on tightly.
From a distance, she informs him that he 
should step inside, he's forgotten his mask
and she would hate to see him pay
the price of someone else's infection.
It's not what he expects. It's not
the argument he craved. At eighty-four,
she is everyone's grandmother, elderly 
aunt, mother, friend who speaks with a firm
voice that brooks no nonsense.
Speechless, he steps back into his apartment.
She has promised him an audience with the
police who have sped to the rescue at
an apartment full of older people.
They arrive and she returns to her recording
of the past so that others can find they way.