Assigned

one ripped with shrapnel
one shocked with awe
under a house, a building
at work
one in the market
a child taking candy from us
one standing in line for a job
a policeman
a dozen on a bus
in a search in the back bedroom at night
a shooter
keep adding
keep counting
when do you get to a thousand?
when do you get to 10?
when do you get to one hundred thousand?

just make it one - just say the one I watched
burst forth into this world
and I would hate you always

Can I say I am sorry?
Can I cry as I  count?
Can I try to count backwards?
How many times?
How long would it take?
Could it be just that one lifetime?

"It seems a sin,
like forgetting God
(is it not worse than denying Him?),
not to remember
the wondrous moments
He presents in a stitching weave
Throughout my life",

I think on the winter night
Looking out across the wide Susquehanna,
Beside the looming mountain
With the full moonlight
At once lighting the river and the snow banks
and hearing somewhere out on the water
The sound of geese squawking,
As if to ready themselves to fling into the air,
Knowing it better to beat their wings
Against the cold than to float
Where the ice is closing in

And I suddenly remember a long ago
Summer day on my back porch
Looking out on the small pond
Behind my house at a thousand
Geese, crowding every inch as the sunset
And they chatted in their way
Of who would go first

And when they lifted off in a sudden
cataclysm of flight
It was as though a piece of the earth
Was launched into the twilight sky,
And a thousand spirits gained a new realm
In a whirlwind that sucked me up with them, rising
On their way, closer to God.