Word Reaches Us
Gifted writer Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple, has written the following poem for Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.
©2011 by Alice Walker
Word reaches us that you are sleeping, sleeping.
Dismayed we have turned to the sea. We encounter among others walking there a sense of what we have lost: the broad expanse of humanity’s sensitivity to the oneness of itself.
Gabrielle, while you sleep, resting your nimble brain, we think of walking with you in the valley of the shadow of death; holding you up.
We hope you can feel our grief; our sorrow vast like the ocean that draws us.
We know in this moment you teach us many things: how all across the world there is no one who deserves this fate. We know we must bleach and sterilize our tongues, brighten with understanding all our dark thoughts.
Sister, whom I never met except in this pain that has so wounded you thank you for reminding us through your suffering and your suspenseful sleep that we must change.
posted by x4mr at 12:19 PM
1 Comments:
I think the shooting of Giffords has really hurt x4mr. He knows she isn't perfect and has her flaws, but he really saw her as someone primed by the forces that be for success, someone for whom all the right things happened.
While his life had the injustices well documented in Something Else, Gabrielle was blessed with the good fortune of a well oiled path.
I think x4mr looked to Gabrielle Giffords, having met her, as the person he hoped (rightly or not) he could have been had he been been born with such opportunity. He took the misfortune, the betrayal, the theft of funding, .... as he tried, but she got the green light, the good fortune. That his "alter-ego" heroine, the one for whom everything was supposed to work out and carry the day, has suffered this blow, shatters his world.
I'm not saying x4mr admired Giffords in some groupie nonsense way, but I do think he saw her as someone who had the launch he so craved, and someone who worked so hard to make good on such an opportunity.
It's actually creepy to read x4mr's account of being shot in the head (wounded, but not killed) in Something Else. He was talking in metaphor, of course.
While he was shot down in flames, he looked to Giffords as the one who would make it.
I think what happened has shaken x4mr to his core.
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