Sunday, April 27, 2025

Dark Days

 


As the Filipino celebration,
Lapu Lapu Block Party, winds down -
children dancing, families smiling their last smiles,
joy in the early evening -
suddenly a black SUV, at high speed,
mows through a crowd of celebrants,
bodies flung high, crashing down
- the dead and the living -
ambulances lined up, responders running,
pulling on blue gloves,
eleven dead, thirty sent to hospital.

"How do they come to the.......
How do they come to the........
come to the still waters and not love?"*

That is the question of the day.
Have compassion, inclusiveness,
equality, citizenship, become words
of a time Before?

A leader in a turban, a man with heart,
weeps as he asks for a Canada
"where we all belong". I weep with him.
I want that Canada too.

Who peeled away civility and encouraged
hate and racism to rise? 

We lay tulips in homage to the departed.
The world we knew feels departed, too.
How do we get it back?


for Shay's Word List

The living and the dead line comes from the title of a poetry collection by Sharon Olds. The italicized lines with the asterisk are from Olds' poem "Sex Without Love". This incident occurred in Vancouver last evening. We are not used to events like this in Canada, but toxic rhetoric has an impact on some unsteady minds. 

(When I wrote this, I  assumed this might have been a racist act, but it appears to have a mental health component. It is all so tragic.) 

Jagmeet Singh, the NDP leader, gave a memorable and emotional speech here:

https://youtu.be/7ZbJHvf689E

(I posted this on my facebook page if you cant access it here.)

We elect a new Prime Minister tomorrow and I am praying it isn't the right wing conspiracy theorist, but the other sane, calm, experienced candidate. We live in hope. I feel like I have been holding my breath for years.


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9 comments:

  1. Jae RoseApril 27, 2025 at 10:21 PM

    I love your final image in this poem full of mourning and senseless of taking lives - Jae

    ReplyDelete
  2. FireblossomApril 28, 2025 at 1:35 PM

    Having lived in the P.I. when I served there in the Air Force, I can tell you that they are some of the friendliest, most cheerful, generous, inclusive people there are. What a damn shame for this to happen.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sherry Blue SkyApril 28, 2025 at 4:36 PM

      Thanks, Shay. I didnt know you had lived there. My daughter-in-love is Filipino, and she is the sweetest girl ever. We are all shaken that this has happened. It's terrible.

      Delete
  3. MaryApril 29, 2025 at 5:56 AM

    What an awful tragedy. No words, no words.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Jennifer WagnerApril 30, 2025 at 4:51 PM

    What a dark day, indeed. How horrific for those families and loved ones.

    ReplyDelete
  5. hedgewitchMay 1, 2025 at 7:01 AM

    There is so much, too much, of this happening around us, for many years here in the U.S. but I'm sad to see the mind sickness has spread to your beautiful country, Sherry. Congrats on electing a liberal P.M. and giving us a little hope that there is light at the end of this awful tunnel into darkness. "..The world we knew feels departed, too..." how sad, and how true. But it will return, I know, even if we elders may not live to see it.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Susie ClevengerMay 1, 2025 at 7:57 AM

    I'm sorry your country has had to face something so American. We've seen it way too often here. My heart goes out to the Filipino community and Canada as a whole. May it never happen again.

    ReplyDelete
  7. renMay 2, 2025 at 10:01 AM

    i never watch the news, and had no idea this happened. such a tragedy.

    ReplyDelete
  8. qbitMay 4, 2025 at 9:02 AM

    You wrote so movingly about such tragedy. Thank you.

    ReplyDelete

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