tuckova

Freshman year in high school, poetry class, and I was reading through
the book, and the teacher asked me a question and though I could
normally answer a question without even one ear half-cocked ("It
concerns man's inhumanity to man" was always good), the poem I had just
read had so torn me that I couldn't speak. If I opened my mouth, I
would start crying and I would never stop. I knew it. So I just shook
my head at her, poor teacher of poetry to freshman girls, ever so many
hormones and so much angst, and she blinked at me and I put my head
down on the desk, where it stayed for the rest of the class.

I've thought about that poem a lot in the last couple decades. I
can't describe it to anybody without crying afresh, and that makes it
hard to track down. Anyway, via the magic of the series of tubes, I did
manage to find it finally. And it is as good as I remember.

This story has three morals:

1. If you have created something, it meant something to somebody even
if you never hear about it. Whether you draw pride from breaking a high
school student's heart in a freshman poetry class or whether you have higher
ambitions doesn't matter. What matters is: it mattered.
2. If you keep looking, you will find it.
3. If you are at your desk when you read this, it is okay to put your
head down and cry (If it doesn't make you cry, I don't want to hear
about it, because you are talking to 14-year-old me and you will break
my heart AGAIN).

Dateline
Death

by
Suzanne Gross

The
paper told where

it
happened of course.

I
have forgotten

the
place now. It could

have
been the corn-green

town
where I was born

and
the trestle curves

a
little west to

cross
the power dam:

There
where I stood once,

stricken
on the bank

above
the rainbow,

and
let explosions

in
the water spin

me
down and drown me.

The
paper said three

children
walked across

a
trestle tall as

mine
was. They were one

boy
nine years old, one

girl
of six, and one

thirteen,
who was her

sister.
When they had

come
halfway across,

the
water running

louder
under them,

glittering
more now

into
their squinting,

they
heard the diesel

horn
behind them blow.

Silently
all three

began
to run. Then

the
youngest fell, caught

her
ankle hard, down

between
the shaking

ties.
The others leaped,

before
they missed her,

safe
from the roadbed.

Then,
only then, one

saw
her sister held

before
the train, who

turned
again, ran back

again,
and tore at

the
shackled foot. Then

she
knelt on the ties

and
took her sister

in
her arms, blinding

her
against her breast,

and
said to her see,

I am
here with you,

there
is nothing to

be
frightened of.

And
the train struck them.

It
may have taken

five
minutes at the

most,
the newspaper

said.
She could not have

known
the thing she chose.

She
could not have known.