On the 2nd June a taxi driver got up and drove around an area of the Lake District in the UK shooting people ...some intentionally, some at random. The effect on the community has been terrible, and this includes my sister and her family who live in the central town Whitehaven where it happened. My neice was locked down in a shop while the killer shot people on the street alongside. In all 25 people were shot. 12 died and others were seriously injured. Lastly he killed himself. Watching the TV reports and listening to my sister filled my head with all these words that needed to be put on paper...
Anyway I wrote this poem...if any of you have any thoughts to add I will send her the link to the thread. Thanks.
Second of June Two Thousand and Ten
A soft sunny morning in the landscape of poets, shattered.
Shots pepper the sounds of the normal day and startle the silence of safety, forever.
A whole community, unready for the devastation, freezes in shock.
Anguish filled eyes, longing for disbelief, forced to blink at sights impossible to bear and hearts grow numb with horror.
Days blur into snatches and cameos: flowers at roadsides, shaking heads, bustling strangers, tabloids, whispers, unforgiving silences, echoes of grief.
Tears finally flow and overflow.
A close-knit strength courageously comes to the fore, but,
Nothing will ever be the same again, and no one knows why.
By an outsider watching.