Herod’s Impotent Hands
by Christine Adams Beckett
Remembering Newtown today…
Frantic, chaotic existence
For one interminable instant:
A pseudo-Egyptian woman
Brave, effusive and artistic
Stowed a score of unquestioning clean slates
Into her Coptic kiln room.
Shots rang out as an Elizabeth,
With a close-grown copse of Johns
Found a split mountain,
A bathroom with tiny toilets
Barricaded from the outside
With feathery volumes of
Pat the Bunny,
Tom Sawyer and
The Diary of Anne Frank.
Waiting for silence,
Peace ever-elusive,
Rows of innocents in an
Evacuation conga line,
Eyes squeezed shut, still shedding tears,
Found their Egypt in a New England fire house,
And Love everlasting in far-reaching arms
Without creed: a mourning, heart-strong
World on the verge of a great shift.
King Herrod lay dead
While the martyrs remain perfectly preserved
In a spiritual idea.
Unchanging from year to year,
Their steadfast awe and heavenly connection
Will live forever in the inverted refraction
On our retinas that perceive…
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Loved it. Well done.