In the Loop

I heard from people after the shootings. People

I knew well or barely or not at all. Largely

the same message: how horrible it was, how little

there was to say about how horrible it was.

People wrote, called, mostly e-mailed

because they know I teach at Virginia Tech,

to say, there’s nothing to say. Eventually

I answered these messages: there’s nothing

to say back except of course there’s nothing

to say, thank you for your willingness

to say it. Because this was about nothing.

A boy who felt that he was nothing,

who erased and entered that erasure, and guns

that are good for nothing, and talk of guns

that is good for nothing, and spring

that is good for flowers, and Jesus for some,

and scotch for others, and “and” for me

in this poem, “and” that is good

for sewing the minutes together, which otherwise

go about going away, bereft of us and us

of them. Like a scarf left on a train and nothing

like a scarf left on a train. As if the train,

empty of everything but a scarf, still opens

its doors at every stop, because this

is what a train does, this is what a man does

with his hand on a lever, because otherwise,

why the lever, why the hand, and then it was over,

and then it had just begun.