A Poem for Sandy Hook

I wrote this poem for the families of Sandy Hook, and for myself, because I needed to do something beyond signing petitions.

A Poem for Sandy Hook

After the upturned desks, the hiding in closets, the running and
The no time to run; after the lines of red-eyes and open mouths,
The microphones pressed in the faces of children but
Not all of them; after crying in the far office bathroom
For kids I’ll never know in a place I’ve never been, again;
After the petitions and tweets and posts
And speeches and hearts going out out out again,
After the never-again, again;

Again it will happen, in Damascus and Panjwai,
In Columbine and Oakland and other places
Named for trees and flowers; again the promises and laws
Will blossom and fall like trees and flowers, and the kids,
Like trees, like flowers, will be too beautiful to bear but
They will be, borne to places under ordinary grass.

After the grass and the stones on stones, after the name
Of the man with the gun is spoken for the last time,
After there are no words must come the words,
Because there are words and you know you know them,
I do, even if I don’t know how to say them.

They are the words welling up in my eyes as I
Picture the backpacks and crayons; words like cool rain
On scalded minds, words like rivers over dusty laws,
Words that shake my body when I hold you close,
(And I am, right now, holding you close), words
We bury under ordinary grass, because we are busy
And afraid and polite and the jerk in the checkout line
And the asshole in the traffic and the inconvenience
Of all the what were we talking about again? and then,
Tomorrow, another after.

After another after,
I must say rain and river,
After never-again again,
I must sing of backpacks and crayons;
After there are no words,
We must make new ones,
Words fashioned from the sounds
Children make when
They collide in bright-eyes and bruised-knees
On playgrounds,
Words that don’t wait
To make the world
What we say it is
When we say
This is what the world is
To children.