The following photograph accompanied the print, as well as the online, edition -- but it was black-and-white and blown up large. It pierced me.
It's like a "Guernica" to me, I must paint it -- unless someone else more talented (not difficult) does so. I think I'll start with small detailed studies though...
Other photographs as well lately have cut through the 9-11/Beslan numbness I'd been experiencing -- young soldiers with their loved ones before the good-bye, the sorrow of a courageous SEAL's widow, a woman's whose only son simply boarded a doomed train. Got me all inspired, poetic-like...
Anguish2
Some look at me
Humanity
Mostly still (tho' sometimes moving)
In black-and-white
And sometimes color
(Usually it's the shot before, not the picture after
A smiling man
Lean, sharp, strong, tan
Or timid, humble
Aw, thank you, ma'am)
All eyes hold equal promise
The others, the after snaps
Go well with Taps
Or Amazing Grace on bagpipe played
Harder to see the eyes through tears
Both mine and theirs jointly displayed
Their realities
My fears
Was one to know such grief thus shared?
Before the camera were we spared?
And were we better
Or were we worse
In an infinitely larger universe
When more died and less cared
One death is a tragedy
But a million's a statistic
In a heart gone numb from madness done
This is sad yet realistic
But as a single face
Stares from the paper's page
And one feels the anguish
And feels the rage
And Vengeance seems not rough but sage
Where would we be if no one dared
I've wept as a child, I've cried as a wife
I've sobbed as a mother destroyed by the theft of young life
But
one
at
a
time
When for a moment they're mine
And I can no longer be shielded by the brutal impersonality of large numbers
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