Day Seventeen

Title: we pray for the snow, for it to stop or keep falling

Just read and look. These, hopefully, need no explanation.

***

Re: Virginia Tech

We breathe in gray
this morning, this nation
awash with grief or
shock or knowing nods.
No one understands
the cold or the snow
that is still falling.
Mid-April isn’t safe
these days, the experts
argue over why.

Thirty-three dead,
I’m bundled up tight.
Tulips full of snow.

We rush to explain,
we've seen this before.
The snow is still falling.

Thirty-three,
I’m counting on my fingers.

We pray for the bodies
being covered with white,
we pray for the snow,
for it to stop or to keep falling.