I recently sent a message to my senators via Mayors for Gun Control arguing that the second amendment is unsustainable. In my view, pervasive gun rights have no effective role in a sustainable world. Sadly so many of us did not wake up to the problem until the massacre in Newtowne, CT. I resisted writing about it on my blog until now since it's about gun control advocacy and not ecology, but in effect gun control is critical to the Commons. Safe streets, safe schools, safe passage is impossible without better gun control laws in urban areas. As a teacher and mother of a first grader, the massacre elevated gun control in my mind with climate change legislation. With these intentions in mind and their belatedness, I pass on and save this poem my brother passed on to me.
26
by Rachel Eliza Griffiths
Your names toll in my dreams.
I pick up tinsel in the street. A nameless god
streaks my hand with blood. I look at the lighted trees
in windows & the spindles of pine tremble
in warm rooms. The flesh of home, silent.
How quiet the bells of heaven must be, cold
with stars who cannot rhyme their brilliance
to our weapons. What rouses our lives each moment?
Nothing but life dares dying. My memory, another obituary.
My memory is a cross. Face down. A whistle in high grass.
A shadow pouring down the sill of calamity.
Your names wake me in the nearly dark hour.
The candles in our windows flicker
where your faces peer in, ask us
questions light cannot answer.
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