November 9, After The Fort Hood Shooting

Janet Barry

And how will I sort through today,
flags drooping dispiritedly at half mast,
honoring the dead who didn’t quite make it
to this last-of-the-season warm November day,

and I am eating and drinking,
some sort of island Reggae playing
on the café stereo, the conversation around me
ranging from Facebook to the bad economy to grandchildren,

and beyond the window the sun-sparkly river
running full and fast, as if to escape it’s muddy confines
before ice-shackles grind it between granite boulders,
before sullen skies striate the winter horizon, and I think

I will go home now, go home and not care anymore,
go to my own house, my own old cat sleeping in the sun,
and I will get the laundry done, make a few calls, 
spend some time in the garden, and I will finally

get in that last harvest of tired old potatoes,
carrots, hurrying before the early dusk,
the windows of my house warm and inviting,
the plot left empty and bare, soil turned over
and over again, until there is no memory

of what grew there.

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