Arizona Shooting

The Snow Man by Wallace Stevens

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs 

Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time 

To behold the junipers shagged with ice, 

The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun;
and not to think 

Of any misery in the sound of the wind, 

In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land 

Full of the same wind 

That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow, 

And, nothing himself, beholds 

Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

Robert Frost wrote, “Poetry is for grief, Politics is for grievance.”
My mind today is cold-winter cold. I try not to think of any misery, but there is a loud roar of the wind—blowing through our land. I shift from grief to grievance. I listen but only hear rhetoric.
A minute of silence at 8AM this morning was not enough. Our reflections need deep meditation. We have to be transformed to a higher plane.
Loss, horror, anger, venting, quietude, paralysis, inertia, depression will be with us for a short while before we once again inhale and move on, remembering or forgetting, learning or dismissing life’s lessons. Becoming wiser or even less tolerant, bearing our scars or covering them.
When will we ever learn? Is the answer really blowing in the wind? Can we only try to grab at answers like reaching for a brass ring as we travel this merry-go-round of life?
I try to fill my mind with the poetry of lyrics. Songs full of words rendering hope, but the white of the Snow Man is smeared with blood. How do we determine what is not there and what is?