“No more hurting people. Peace.”

for Martin Richard

A bomb blast. The moment passes into another bomb blast.
The volume & incongruity of bomb blasts stuns. These are
eye-popping: the cotton-flame billow of explosions, the char

& carnage, torn off limbs & bone shards, the blood & burn,
blown-out store fronts & glass shards. Bodies: three dead, more
than one hundred forty injured, many requiring amputation.

The dead include an eight-year-old, Martin Richard.
A photo surfaces of him: he’s holding a hand-lettered sign
No more hurting people. Peace. The picture goes viral.

He is not an offer to the gods; he is not a sacrifice to the gods
of anger, of rage, of war. His murder is no signal of righteous
indignation. No simmering pressure cooker of a life, no rage,

no grievance justifies this attack, this killing, or any killing
of innocents. No good can come from violence. I feared that
the perpetrators were in full flight, or were hiding among us.

Now: what of so much inaction, this national drift in the face
of indiscriminate use of guns & bombs & continuing violence
of all kinds? Chimes mark passing of the moments, hours, days,

time. Candles are lighted in memory of those murdered & those
injured, so many grievously. There are now more names, more
vigils, more names to be carved in granite, & more empty chairs.

Martin, a thoughtful, kind boy, with all of his life spread out
before him — stolen in an instant. We owe Martin’s memory
better than this. We owe all children & each other a much better
future. We can do better than this, must end the violence, must.

~*~

Andrew Shattuck McBride
NaPoWriMo ~ 2013 | My Day 13
April 17-21, 2013