I think on the lost souls of the children

the lost potentials,

shifted from sunny wills

to cold stillness,

caught student photo frozen

in the last fall they laughed in.

The cancer of cowardice

strikes the innocent ones,

leaving a wake of gun smoke,

the taste of tears, blood echoes

and the constricted racking of moments,

to minutes, to nullified forevers.

I have taught through the years of lowering,

the flags often outliving the lost ones,

but not residual sorrow, and this rainy May,

from the fourth floor window of the school

I watch a mourning flag raging in a strong storm

I feel I should be able to fight.