Connecticut

by eatonhamilton

I feel, like so many people today, mute and broken by what, again, has happened.   Treasure your babies.

After Columbine, I wrote this poem:

 

Trenchcoat

 

It was so hard to let her go off to high school

that spring.  I longed to take her wrist

and drag her with me instead

 

She made me drop her two blocks from school

Low on her hip she

flicked her fingers to rid herself of me

 

It wasn’t just Columbine

Children were dying video gun deaths

all over the US

Teens were being snapped in two in car accidents

breakable as bread sticks

or taken to lonely woods

and crumpled like test papers

 

Later that summer at the swimming pool

teen boys tossed my daughter, their football,

arms newly strong, voices

loud, sure, traveling out over the heads of toddlers

and kids in grade school

moms with infants at breast

 

She fought for footing on the bottom of the pool

came up sputtering

giggling

happy to be vanquished