Grief Daily Witness Day 59

Injured occupants are carried out of Norris Hall at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va., Monday, April 16, 2007. A gunman opened fire in a dorm and classroom on the campus, killing at least 30 people in the deadliest shooting rampage in U.S. history. The gunman is killed but it's unclear if he was shot by police or took his own life.
(AP Photo/The Roanoke Times, Alan Kim)

Ghost Notes (an excerpt)
by Ralph Burns

for Danny Fletcher

I. Call and Response

3

It's beauty people fear, bright

rose riding on Aunt Billie's forehead,

the way light makes green everything

after her pickled okra, stubble

in the hands of day labor, callouses

of a parade of things and

touching them without seeing

or hearing without knowledge,

dumbstruck by a brooding need to define

or look without a place

to grieve, beauty and not faith

in truth in the light of justice --

just reach and nothing's there

but what's there already.

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April is National Poetry Month