Three Thousand Five Hundred and Two (2018)*

rain in darkness shifts

and shimmers

the faintest child’s voice

her final cry for help,

a mere glimmer.

(stop this we ought,

yet have not)

now dazed by days of rain

and news that shoots

and downpours

where we’ve gathered

to weep,

to rage,

to scream,

ask why again

this pain

while Congress prays, delays,

denies and blathers.

we bow our heads in shame

as we should,

blurred eyes cast where grief

under mud hides buried 

inside false beliefs of impotence

as numbly, we shiver awake

to more clearly see

in depths of darkness lives

a flame for all to warm beside.

Together we must protect,

speak out, sustain

and tend this light

so that children’s

safety becoming fact

is finally in truth

delivered.

*The approximate number of children ages 6-18 killed 
by firearms in the US in 2018