22 Years and Counting
~b.r.crandall
I was a month from student teaching,
still learning to dust chalkboards with
language, history, and hope.
He brought a school project
to Paducah, but he didn’t know exactly why.
Maybe looking for love? Revenge?
Just him, a shotgun, and a pistol
after his sister drove the two of them
into another day.
There is still more work to do.
I was in my 2nd year when it became
history needing to be taught to future
generations…one of homemade bombs
and militia-mind maneuvers
game-played at a Colorado high school.
Our principal noted at the time,
“Schools will never be the same."
But what about the rights of the
domestically violent and extreme,
those that wear blue suits
& sunglasses, who go rogue
in a hunt across state borders?
They have rights, too.
AK-47s, high capacity magazines.
Universal background checks
are weapons that assault them
Ghost guns gone rogue.
Murderers. Carnival barkers on the radio.
No need to write names here.
They are not worth the poem.
I skipped teaching in 2012 -
2nd year at the University…
needed a mental break…
went to see The Hobbit
(a bad habit of being a geek)
28 miles south of Sandy Hook.
Text messages. Phone calls…
20 sprites sitting on ABC carpets
learning to read and write.
8 souls who believed in them.
Today, I run for Vicki Soto.
Still more work to do..
They are seniors now…
kids welcomed as freshmen
to a high school in Parkland…
planted in a field of Floridian possibilities.
They are the potential…the
blazing stars, sunflowers,
(shadows of Columbine),
jessamine, and honeysuckle,
who wanted to bloom
before fire opened “good morning,’
to what they’d know of their adolescence.
Covid followed, watering the “best years”
as their governor berated
them for wanting to be alive.
More work needs to be done.
This education we’re giving them.