For the eighteen lives lost in the mass killing in Lewiston, Maine, on 25 October 2023, and all who remember them
In Lisbon and Lewiston, some gather
their gear, shoulder hunting rifles,
drive out to wooded trails, past fields
of dried-out cornstalks, to deer stands
nailed into tree trunks. In silence,
they sit and wait, just as they kept
watch behind bolted doors, locked windows,
for the last three days. Those days and nights,
they prayed for the dead and dying, for the ones
who hunted human quarry, the ones who bore
a different license.
Today, they may still pray for lost neighbors
and friends, though maybe not for the huntsman,
now dead. Today, they fervently beg for a buck
to cross their gunsights, for a steady hand, a clean shot,
venison in the freezer. And, enough beer to tell tales
about the ones who got away, enough beer to help forget
their watching and waiting in the darkness and silence.
At this day’s end, the Hunter’s Moon glows,
beams its borrowed radiance, sheds enough light
to show the way home.
Photograph by Rebecca K. Brown
Smoky Quartz 