Subject:
Date: Fri, 24 Dec 1999 14:48:19 EST
From: ZseleczkyJ@aol.com
To: ColumbinePrayers@dreampackers.com
ZseleczkyJ writes:
http://members.aol.com/ZseleczkyJ/myhomepage
This site contains a poem I finished in memory of the Columbine kids, and the
survivors, among others.
Please get it to the families, if possible, with my wishes for a happier year.
I know it is only a poem.But I send my heartfelt wishes for peace and some
measure of happiness in what must still be a terrible time for you.
And I know we are ALL diminished by each of those deaths.
Joan Zseleczky
~*~*~*~*~*~*~ Somewhere Over the Sea of Japan ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Top of the seventh, six to five, Phillies
(on this set we watched a wall brought down)
--the way they hit, anything's possible--
(and saw some men lift a child from a well)
on a run made so fast, nobody saw it
(witnessed two men shaking hands on a lawn).
Everything happens: anything can.
I stitch a quilt for the Sea of Japan,
Flight 007 over Sakhalin:
Indigo, violet, navy and emerald
--The sun rose that morning, the sea went on shining;
we threw flowers to the waves and then moved on.
(The lull between innings is much too long.
For luck I put the sewing down.)
(I've seen it all come together from nothing:
a year ago, southern fields white with cotton,
sun burnished, rain drenched, harvested, spun,
stained the colors of all the earth.
Last month brought north in trucks bound for Harlem.
Sunday night, musing, I went for a walk
and on a whim bought some bright colored cloth.)
Squares come together under my needle.
Think on what is and what's possible. When
someone can waft one out of the park
or Dykstra catch anything they might lob him,
it's nobody's guess what'll come, what goes down.
Might as well wish for whatever you want.
. . . But O Canada . . .
Pinch hitters do what they do very well
someone will lose a ball in the lights
. . . and it sails, it hangs, and finally falls
and tonight the Jays will take back the Series.
. . . And the little boy gunned down at dawn,
caught in a shootout in Brooklyn this morning
(never having played the game)
will join the Jays on the evening news.
Tomorrow, Sunday, the Dome will go dark.
No more baseball up here until spring.
. . .Anything? Anything at all? All right. . .
over the Sea of Japan that night,
and at dawn, as slugs pierced tenement glass,
on the fields of the world where the eyes shall close
too soon, for no reason at all,
or against all odds, as at Columbine,
or in innocent Dunblane . . .
and many years hence, for the boys of autumn
Let it have come in a blink, as they dreamt
(let time have compressed almost infinitely)
so none can have seen it or possibly known . .
.
Each one waking. . . in Light
In sleep . . .stealing Home.
NOTE: Originally started during the Phillies--Blue Jays World Series, and completed 27 October
1999, upon news of the death of Charles O'Neill. To the survivors. And for all the boys of
summer.
The author is a writer in Manhattan. (
geocities.com/rainforest)