As Linda And I Walk West In Late Afternoon

Behind phone wires, cloud wisps like pink-red fingers seem to drift with us. They’re fuchsia, you say. Last evening on 4-South, we admitted a frail older woman. Thelma didn’t know where she was. When I told her, she glared at my plastic I.D. badge. That explains a lot about you, she said, stubbing one finger toward my chest.

Under the green EXIT sign glowing like radium, she proceeded to sit mute by our locked double doors, blocked the entrance, refused to go to her room. Four of us cradled her like a gaunt peahen. May your souls be forgiven, she said.

As our charge nurse Miss Dee gave her the injection of Ativan, we held Thelma gently on her bed. Later, I strummed the unit guitar, a few chords in the dark. By our hall table, not far from our glowing nurses station, I sang “On Wings Of A Dove” as she had asked. Now in the west, red clouds almost like fringes—on the empty street, we stop, and they stop, too.

an earlier version of this poem was published in the online journal Open: A Journal of Arts & Letters

Robin Woolman

Gown of Tiers

(Response to Uvalde shooting)

On my walk today I was passed by a red-cheeked teenager jogging. “Hi”

“Hello” I read the back of her out-sized white t-shirt: “District Soccer Champions 2018” and the list of Names descending to the hem.

On my watch today I was passed by 19 children shot through their school clothes by a teenager sporting an AR-15styleDDM4.

I think of a white t-shirt: “Kids Killed at School 2022” with their Names scrolling down a young person’s spine.

I think of more Names in Texas Florida Colorado Virginia and I think: a shirt is not long enough.

I will sew a gown with tiers. I will cut each layer wide enough for all the dead Names of a year.

I will use the lightest of materials like clouds, like ghosts, like shrouds: organza gauze muslin voile.

Each year the tier will be wider. Each tier will have the long stride of the gathering threads to pull the Names closer together. They will overlap in random folds so that Names become No-things: ElkenFlorCarvanosMarisRamRodexiLayRoJailCruzTorres

Then I will stitch tier to tier year after year hoping each seam might be the last, but fearing our pattern is cut. My gown will grow ruffle upon ruffle—a cascading chronology oftheNamesofthechildrenrippedoutoflives.

On my walk someday I will wear my gown trailing in the gravel and be passed by someone:

“Hi”

“Hello” and we will remember how each Name might have been a Champion.