An Elegy For Safety: For the Victims of Virginia Tech

I remember the wooden floors of Catholic school; And the grin reflected in glossy planks; And how I learned of God, love, peace, white, pure, But never knew anything else, A warm embrace of family in the house of God, His warmth raining on me in the Spring of my youth. And the friends I had, who were wet with me, And in the name of childhood We danced and sang. But it was a child who shot down His school, covering steel bullets in blood; More powerfully covering childhood in the truth: There is no safe place. The planks hold doubter’s eyes, now, The reality that death is for all of us, That each person holds the end Of strangers’ worlds in his hands. If I could take the Hokies, And all the murdered youth of this greatest nation, And heal them, I would. But I did not invent the safe feeling Only remaining…hopefully somewhere.