Lines for a Hard Time

Evil does not go always

by dark ways. On any hot

summer day, cleanshaven

it may stride across

a public place and head

purposefully for high

vantagepoints.

What whisper

hisses in the inner ear

take cover? Ah, and then

the boy is dead, others dead

or dying, and the evil

laps out from bits of hot

lead across the nervepools

of the nation.

We are sick

in our littered streets

and high places. Worms twist

in our labyrinthine skulls.

We are frightened by bland

facades.

The losses are always

personal. A phone rings;

a father becomes less than

the sum of his grief. Could we

say better than his own words,

And we will die as well...

Spiral upward into All Love?

Good man, good grieving man,

all men have lived in evil

times, though few have known it

absolutely. We persist.

We love ourselves as often

as we can. And send our sons

to walk out in open day.