Poems Not Prose #3: Little Bird Robin 2-28-92

When I was 17 years old a girl from my high school that I didn’t know was shot and killed. I don’t remember much, but a few students in my senior class knew her and I remember the counselors coming to campus. I didn’t write the poem until a year later, and though the tragedy didn’t impact me directly it does come to my mind from time to time. This is one of the few poems that I’ve written that I can recite by heart and remember writing. I found one news article dated January 28, 1991: A Sniper’s Shot Brings Death and Heartbreak, Smashing the Dreams of a Girl and Her Parents. It was a time when newspapers were just starting to put things on the internet. Reading it I was struck that the mother was, then, my age now.

Little Bird
2-28-92

Little bird, Robin
With your breast of scarlet
I heard not your cheery song
Before the unsound black Snipe
snuffed out your lighted candle
as you were passing by.

7 comments on “Poems Not Prose #3: Little Bird Robin 2-28-92”

M
February 25, 2015

So so so lovely.

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- Laissez Faire
  February 25, 2015
  
  Thank you. I haven’t thought about it for a long time. I remember her name after all this time and I didn’t even know her. It is one of those things that stay with you.
  
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  - M
    February 25, 2015
    
    Oh definitely – we had someone die in my last year of high school. I didn’t know her very well but I know it was shocking. Being a person who has never dealt with a serious death, I worry for when it happens.
    
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beckythegeek
February 25, 2015

Really moving x

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- Laissez Faire
  February 25, 2015
  
  Thank you. I haven’t thought about it for a long time. It is one of those things that stay with you.
  
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Daleen
February 26, 2015

The poem brought tears to my eyes. It is really very moving and tender

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- Laissez Faire
  February 26, 2015
  
  I appreciate you commenting to tell me that. It made my day.
  
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