For Newtown

In A Silent City

Walk the streets of this silent city walk

all day all night and on into the next

until the sound of your footfalls ebb

by degrees, an eternity thin as

a bee’s wing between them, each one orphaned

to aimlessness stark as a sonar ping.

Find yourself before a modest house find

the courage to let yourself in to roam

empty stillborn rooms waxen in twilight

leaning lightly on a carved newel that will

never wear down beneath a warm steady

erosion of hands, their fingers destined

never to still the lips of whispering

lovers or sweep hair back from the foreheads

of feverish children or ever so

carefully lower yielding lids over

grateful eyes spared searing indelible

etching.  Small fingers laced in eternal

salvation from thoughts of putting a gun 
to God's temple and pulling the trigger.

Pray you’ll find the door and leave this house pray

for all the good it will do, solemn walls

silent witness to what will never be.