alps poem #1

alps poem #1

I was torn before at the news a hundred
fifty lives lost in the alps especially those
students and teachers returning from a
happy exchange in spain I hoped no one 
saw it coming till the last second but with
this morning’s news I am haunted haunted
that one man chose to take one hundred
forty nine persons with him on his suicide
plunge the locked-out head pilot trying to
smash in the cockpit door screams from
behind all this deduced from a mangled
box the co-pilot is breathing easily through
his deliberate descent it is too too awful
I see the experts huddled over the box/
playing it again and yet again till one says
play it once more, and do you think what 
I’m thinking can you possibly think – and 
their horrified stares as they do think it –
the mesmerizing news informs us this has 
happened before gives dates numbers dead
I recall in my youth a man put a time bomb 
in his mother-in-law’s luggage he killed her 
all right and a plane full of others he set it to
explode over the grand canyon so no clues 
could be found but the plane was late went
down in a recoverable area that awful story 
has been buried in my mind for decades 
now I think about those innocents fleeing 
from villages all over the world starved sick
and wars we should never have started and
the young man I saw today wheelchaired a 
metal pole for his leg and birds without a
nesting place and climate naysayers who
can buy elections with their billions while
funding huge gifts to the Smithsonian and
I weep for humankind and all else that is
plummeting with us as we press the button

©2015 Jacqueline Jackson