Poem: In Memoriam

I heard about it right after I finished my ECTs, when I went to the physician lounge for a bagel. Strange how we sense something isn't right; I can't identify exactly when I knew, but I knew before I parsed the words from the television. My heart aches for all those involved. My prayers go with the victims and victim's families. I am a little numb with shock, and struggle to understand my thoughts (and to avoid Claudius' folly in Hamlet: "My words go up, my thoughts remain below. / Words without thoughts never to heaven go."). Everyone has their way of coping, whether posting on social media, petitioning a senator, mourning, or gritting teeth and plowing on. I write. First drafts are never clean, but I hope that my words and thoughts are married and carry my deepest sympathies.

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In Memoriam

lip of wax tumbles headlong
melting a rosary bead wake
chill caresses fingers
ache entombs brain
steady flame quenched
acrid stink, disfigured
candlelight darkens

i danced with a blind woman
held a cancer patient's hand
peeled an orange
listened to latin chants
and heard of the twenty
who will never have

twenty christmas trees
long of child, twenty
siblings find no counsel
twenty priests turn away
twenty politicians arise
twenty insomniac families
twenty candles to light

a child is who we wished
we could be, who we wished
for, who we wished could
see do hear taste play love
and to say we love a child
is to use the best word
for why our heart squeezes
so damn hard
but the word still falls
so so short.