Again

The President speaks before a room of mourners
and before a bank of cameras and microphones
That carry him before a nation
Watching with tight throats and sadness.
Or with numbness, or anger, or disbelief, or... everything.

Twenty young children lost in their classrooms
Or running down their school hallways
In a confused hail of semi-automatic bullet fire;
Six adults lost trying to stop death in its trigger-down tracks
before it claimed the young souls in their care that morning.

Christmas gifts bought, wrapped, and now un-received
Bear witness to the holes powerfully ripped, shot
Through the lives of a community and through
The lives of the surviving family and friends,
Again. We have to add, "Again."

Until we no longer have to say, "Again" we must
Work to change the rules by which we live
And die—all too frequently by which so many die.
Anything less is far too little and leaves us all
Afraid and incapable. Unable or unwilling?

Are we unable or unwilling to do what six brave women did
When death came walking and shooting
Along the hallways of their school, when they said,
"No more!" with their lives and last actions
In an attempt to save lives or end the killing.

We can change this, if we really want to.
We can save a future classroom, theatre, shopping mall
Full of lives not planning to suddenly die
on that particular future day. Or we can wait until
We have to once more say, "Again," inevitably.


- Posted via Hermes.