Today's poem is by Lee Peterson

Equinox: Elegy
        —for Osaze Osagie

Yesterday, the day was as long as the night.
Half a mile from here, he fell. He was not well.
We are not well. Yesterday, spring began. He was
his father's son, a man I'd met. His mother's child. He was
held. A shape in the world. A local boy, a man.
He was twenty-nine. He had a smile, a name, was kind,
unwell. Yesterday, his father called to have them come—
a father's concern. Yesterday, they came. He had a knife.
They had guns. They were men, all young. The dead and
those he left behind. You can guess the color of their skin.
You can guess how this ends. He was a man of peace, his parents
said. A child of Christ. The earth makes one path around the sun.
Today the day will be longer than the night. Though it feels
like a lie. Yesterday, spring began. Today it rained and was cold.

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Copyright © 2023 Lee Peterson All rights reserved
from In the Hall of North American Mammals
Cider Press Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission