Today's poem is by Adam Tavel

John Coltrane at Ground Zero
        Hiroshima, 1966

Your translator paced the empty train
until he found you dreaming wide awake,
alone, clacking scales up and down
a tuneless flute that shimmered in your lap.
The city's tidy angles made you grin.

Adamant, you insisted handlers drive
you straight to the memorial where snapshots
freeze you still, hunched and ministerial
laying a wreath, your reverent grief
outlasting the patience of the band.

John, I woke just now to read how a gunman
raged into a Texas church and splintered
pews so he could decimate the cowering
worshippers who shrieked and hugged the floor.
When his rifle crossed a five-year-old

he blasted sunlight through her ribs.
I turned away to fold my toddler's clothes
and scrub flecks of spaghetti sauce
one washing could not undo, praying
the stains come out. Half-awake, I feed

them now into the machine thundering
our half-dark house where three children snore,
each burrowed in a mess of twisted sheets.
This window shields us from an autumn dawn
with clouds ablaze like pentecostal tongues.

Let me turn back. Let me endure the scroll
of faces gone. Let me find the will
to sing a dead child's name into the sky.
Like you I'll lace my hands and squeeze my eyes
and try to make some music from the bomb.

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Copyright © 2022 Adam Tavel All rights reserved
from Green Regalia
Stephen F. Austin State University Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission