Ongoing Elegy Poem by Jim Yerman

ONGOING ELEGY

The words you're about to read are part of an ongoing elegy that began in 1999
after 12 students and one teacher were killed in the halls of Columbine.

We immediately looked to our leaders for a beacon of hope…a sign…
that they would try to keep us safe…after Columbine

We hoped they would do something….perhaps put a law upon the books…
We knew they wouldn't let this continue…
then came Sandy Hook.

And again we looked to our leaders…
they wouldn't sit back and watch more people die…
Surely this time they would do something…
then came Parkland and Marjorie Stoneman Douglass High…

They should have offered us more than their prayers and hopes and thoughts…
but after Columbine,
after Sandy Hook…
after Parkland…
they did not

And so we add more names to this elegy…after another senseless shooting spree…
more children and adults gunned down…in a school in Tennessee

We like to think we are not a heartless people …although we often act as if we are
but at what point do we as a nation say…this has gone too far?

Yes, we thought they'd come up with a policy, a strategy…some kind of design…
but here we are still waiting…24 years after Columbine.

24 years still waiting for our leaders to address a problem
whose solutions are plain to see….
for until they do,
with sorrow in my heart,
I'll keep adding to this elegy.