Source: flickr.com via Hattie on Pinterest
Tragedy is never innocent:
It robs love,
Violates trust:
A hurricane wipes out
Our cities,
An election divides
The country in blue and red
Yet the red of blood shed
Within a school scars its children,
Eyes as she holds her grandbaby;
Chills run up and down my spine
And I listen to a teacher’s tale
Of trying to calm the children
As they hear gunshots, one after
The other, broadcast throughout
The school, children die, parents
Scream and cry.
Loss is not an ending.
Grief spares none, and those
Who sit before their screens
Witnessing a horror they’d never
Imagine, attempt to grasp at a feeling
Only those who lost can know,
Only those who were there can share:
How care blasted a day into a hell
They won’t forget, Friday the 14th,
Flags will fly at half-mast for a week
To remind all what many will never forget:
One man took a gun into a school
And shot 20 children. Reason laughs
At understanding and forgiveness
Is hung on many hearts with dripping blood,
Six adults, the shooter dead, and we sit
As a nation, or a family, or a friend,
Able to offer nothing that can give
What this day has taken:
Grace and mercy extinguished
From our eyes that dare all to believe
Hope will find a place to rise.
I am a full time yoga teacher, trained at City Fitness in Washington, DC and Willow Street Yoga Center in Silver Spring, Maryland. I have been writing poetry since I was 9 years old. Poetry is my first love and yoga continues to feed my heart. I write because I love it. I teach because I love it. I tell my students all the time: do it because you can. That works for me. I believe in creating opportunity. I believe in helping my self and others. I think faith is the most important gift of life, because when we lose everything else we still have that in our heart. I believe the natural state of being is happiness, or bliss, or Ananda. Life is a celebration. Poetry and yoga help me celebrate. Check out my blog and website here.
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Editor: Brianna B.
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