The pain of the Massacre in Virginia is still raw as we try to make sense of it all. The airwaves are inundated with breaking news as we grasp for some reason, some way we could have prevented it, some sign we can identify to ensure it never happens again. When you consider the enormity of this incident, the impact it has had nationally and more specifically in Blacksburg and more significantly among those who knew and loved the 33 fallen souls it is easy to be overwhelmed. People are not supposed to die at the hands of disgruntled mad men for no other reason than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Young college kids on the cusp of making a life for themselves should not be senselessly slain before having the opportunity to contribute to making the world a better place. And that is what happened.
And 6000 miles away a similar atrocity replays every single day. We so easily get caught up in the political rhetoric of being for or against the war in Iraq and our words have begun to sound hollow as we consider one lesson we can take from Virginia. The circumstances of death in Virginia and Iraq bear little in common but in the end the results are sadly similar. Families are mourning their dead. So I guess it doesn’t matter much if you support the President’s war in Iraq or oppose it so long as an end to the violence is your primary goal. In the week of March 21 – 27 the daily death count of civilians in Iraq were 58, 90, 54, 79, 26, 34 and 276. The mothers and fathers, the brothers and sisters and the grandparents and grandchildren of Iraqi dead see death counts similar to those which have suddenly grabbed our attention as the rule and not the exception.
Please pray for the families of the senselessly murdered students from Virginia but save a little prayer time for families in Iraq.
(Chris Wilcox)
(Chris Wilcox)
HEMORRHAGE
Thirty-three crows strut crudely before me,
Their black beaks pounding the ground;
Echoes of a distant thinking
Rebelling against the wind.
Thirty-three far-flung voices climbed the sky,
Their stained hands groping plaintively near;
Spirits of the far-away land
Absently rasping the storm.
Thirty-three students prone upon their loss,
Hemorrhage in the shock of undue vacancy;
Stunned gasps rasp our ears
With a hollow astonishment.
© 2007 mrp/thepoetryman
