A Rubaiyat for Landen, Five Years Old

How many feet per second did your thoughts
fall through your skull midair preceding loss?
Fall prey to things we wish that we had done
like caring for the sick? Is that too fraught

with politics? And so instead we shun
the ones who need us most, two separate sons
both failed by us while up on that third floor
now we all feel a grief I can’t outrun.

The marble floor transformed to site of gore,
onlookers, we who heard, left to implore
the whims and wonders of a sunless sky.
He did a thing that sanity abhors.

At Shake Shack with my family there’s a guy
there with his daughters, then I see his eye
transfixed. The local news is on the screen
above our heads. His face is asking why?

And now the news says Landen is between
two worlds. He’s helped by doctors and machines
Emmanuel will now be thrown away
as some among us long for guillotines.

If only we cared as much as we say
we would have taken action on the day
we saw something was wrong, wellness betrayed
by our allegiance to naivete.