aurora.

Terror and tragedy
have become instant,
accessible. From where I sit
in a comfortable chair,
I conjure shocking vignettes
with a button.

Grief, pain, and horror
come coursing through chips,
wires and optic-thread cables,
translated to binary babble,
then burst into headlines
that hang over images
weary with frozen tableaus
that depict, yet again,
the sheer madness of men.

I press a hand to my mouth.
--Meanwhile, somewhere are people
that shake, overtaken
by slow recognition
of severance, growing
aware that the voices
that chattered adrenaline
only two hours ago
will not rejoin them -
voices imprisoned
in cold cells of memory,
each by a bullet
of deafening senselessness.

I ache with aches
never mine to begin with:
aching for fathers
and mothers and colleagues
and children and cousins
and friends
whose whole lives
in an instant
were ripped into pieces,
whose fixing will never
patch over the emptiness.

I burn with helplessness,
creeping paralysis
coursing my veins
from this twenty-first century
cultural consequence:
flash information
on more than I'll ever
be able to process
in seconds and moments
on pages of pixels.

Death weaves its way
through the chips and the cables,
demanding awareness
of all it's accomplished:
Your time has not come yet
but everyone's must.
We will sip at the cup
that makes dust into dust.

All I can do is recall
that the God who seized hold
of that cup,
drank it down to its dregs
for a scandalous love,
is a God who can weep
at the grave of a friend.

And so, from my desk,
as I watch time unfold
with the flames and the tremors
of groaning creation --
as I wonder sometimes
if it's really all in His hands, --
I'll mourn with the mourning,
be love to my neighbor,
and cling to the promise of sunlight
that comes with the morning
that must be approaching.