One More Piece of Holy Ground.

Two weeks until summer,

the air already so hot and still

I haven't breathed since late February. 

Even then, the snow was blowing up from hell.

I could put the fan on,

open a cold one,

but it won’t help.

I'll still have to figure it all out,

figure out my next breath.

I was raised that a man don’t run.

And that’s how I’ve lived my life.

Now I sit here, surrounded 
by a group of somebody's peers,
 and wonder who the hell thought that one up:

The man with the car?

The man with the gun?
The man who lies in your face?

All my losses and all my grief

and all the regrets of my life,
too many to name
but nothing compared to that day,
they're easy to sum up:

I wish I had taught my son to run. Run fast.
And let me stand in his place. 

***
what astonishes me: that parents, every day, are living through this; that they can live through this