Who can bear to grieve,
all at once, twenty children and six grownups,
much less get busy enough to marginalize the liars
who say guns make babies safe?
Only a liar could ignore the fate
of the Newtown mother who bought
her son an arsenal of guns.
They’re in a better place, it’s said;
Maybe so, but it’s their deadness,
not their whereabouts, that I hold onto –
imagining the fate of disembodied souls
distracts me from the source of tears.
My own sister died 3 months earlier,
and it will be years before I’ve cried enough
and settled matters with her,
whose significance to me is as serious
as a secret shared by children.
Dave Read