Tree of Life
(Addressed to Robert Bowers)
©October 27th, 2018
By Vijaya Sundaram
Your name means the shade,
The sheltering arbor.
But you broke into the
Tree of Life, and snapped branches,
Trampling on prayer and holiness.
The dead will haunt you.
And you will die, broken, your
Voice gone, choking on grief,
As the roots of the Tree of Life
Will clutch at your feet
And draw them in,
Deeper into the earth,
And your life-force
Will be sucked into it.
You, who kill,
You will meet the dead,
And they will forgive you,
And love you, and haunt you,
Till you scream for mercy.
And they will smother you
With all the love you took
Away from them, all the love
They still had in the world,
All the love that broke loose
When you shot them, as they prayed.
And you and your kind
Will choke on their sentence of love
That never got to be completed,
Because …
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