SILVER DART

The first time I saw your body

Shining silver, your black bucket seats

I knew I wanted you.

I slid into you

Trying to hide my excitement.

I put my hands on your wheel

And thought we fit like we were

Made for each other.

I took you home that very day.

We travelled many places near and far:

Fire Island, the Berkshires, Vermont, Canada.

I won the lottery, put you in the garage beneath me.

Came home one day to see you shattered,

Your glass broken, your insides burned;

Only the driver’s seat remained.

We’d been together for ten years.

I would have kept you forever.

But now it seemed I had to let you go.

The man who came to take you away

Got you started.

That broke my heart more.

I never bought another car.

****************************

THE END OF INNOCENCE

They’d found their Camelot in Newtown, Connecticut

And the best school for children and teachers

Five kids to a class in Sandyhook, Elementary.

Twenty children, aged 6 to 7, shot in their faces,

Dead in their places

Five teachers and a principal, shot, dead.

An official told us on TV

“Schools are the safest place to be.”

Really? Then give my child back to me.

Statistics lie. Guns kill.

Again and again and again and again

Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora…

Colin Ferguson shot a carful on the L.I.R.R.

Gabby Giffords was shot in a public square.

Into the hands of madmen land the guns,

And nothing is done.

“Close your eyes” the surviving kids were told

As they were led away

They knew they should obey.

The murders of the innocent young

Touched everyone

Mayor Bloomberg raised his voice—

“Empathetic words won’t change a thing”

He told President Obama via TV

Who could not help but hear

After four years of tears.

Maybe Michelle will give him hell

If he does nothing.

Some will say “Blame it on the NRA”

They’re just too powerful.”

Assault weapons, magazines of ammunition

It’s become a tradition.

Presidents and Congressmen give up without a fight.

Leaving innocents to their plight.

Eileen Schepetin started writing in her late teens, as catharsis, to let out feelings evoked by events in her life and in the world. She was an adventurous person, and put some of her experiences down in a writing class in college, in what she later learned would be called memoirs. She then started to write poetry on her own, perhaps inspired by the poetry she had listened to in cafés in Greenwich Village when she was sixteen to eighteen. She had also studied some of the great poets in college. Later in life she found a church basement where people composed and played their own music and lyrics, and they let her read her poetry. Then, at JASA Senior Center, she found a writing group where the teacher, Ellen Gould, encouraged her to write poetry or prose. She began to write also about political and social events that affected her, such as Reflections on 9-11 and The Princess Who Would Not Be Queen (Princess Di). A few years later, another teacher at JASA, Joan Falper, started a memoir writing workshop which she resisted at first, but when she finally joined, she wrote regularly for about one year. When Andrew Warren replaced Ms. Falper with his Creative Writing class, she started attending it and continues to write for that class. Finally, she joined the poetry class at Hamilton Senior Center, taught by Michelle de Savigny, and found that she did, indeed, have “a touch of the poet.”