Uvalde

Roy Blokker 1950 (The Netherlands)



I live my life, she lives hers,
Moment to shining moment,
Adventure at her doorstep,
My granddaughter, sweet angel
With enougfh little devil in her
To make life a daily charm.
And I do not want to imagine...
And I cry out, yet again, When will it stop?
When will we stop aborting our children
Already here?
No rhymes today, just unmetered tears,
Incomprehensible sorrow.
If the children are our future,
What of America now?

About this poem

We each deal with tragedy in our own way, even tragedies that do not affect us directly but demand our focus. I remind myself that it's not about me, but I need to put it in terms I can understand. I always turn to poetry. We lose a human being to gun violence in America every 45 minutes. In the two weeks since this tragedy there have been over 18 “mass shootings” throughout the country. Only in America! Only in America does a person's right to own a weapon of mass destruction trump another person's right to not live in fear of being murdered at random. So I ask, and I warn. As Wilfred Owen instructed us over a century ago, it is a poet's duty to warn. 

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Written on May 22, 2022

Submitted by RoyBlokker on June 05, 2022

Modified on March 05, 2023

25 sec read
2

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABCDEFGHGIJKEL
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 423
Words 85
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 14

Roy Blokker

Born in the Netherlands in 1950, I moved to America as a todler. My father's itchy foot brought us to all sorts of interesting places, and I still love to travel. I graduated from the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1971, then became a postal letter carrier for 31 years before retiring to the Big Sky Country of Montana. I am author of 11 books, including 7 volumes of poetry, 2 anthologies and a novel. more…

All Roy Blokker poems | Roy Blokker Books

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    "Uvalde" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Mar. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/128667/uvalde>.

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