One year after Charleston’s murders, one week after Orlando’s tragedies, I read in the Asheville paper (Sunday edition June 19, 2016, page 8A) this headline:
“County looks at shifting funds from art museum to public gun range.”
I said out loud, “WHAT??!” then a soft, “oh, please.”
Mike Fryer, Republican representative of District 2 describes the range as, “Something for the people. I’m not an avid gun person. But I’m (also) not an avid art person. There’s people in the county that want to shoot.”
He goes on and says the demand for a place to practice shooting can be gauged by the number of people with guns. There were 11,643 people with concealed handgun permits as of December 31, 2015 in Buncombe county.
He continues, “The NC Wildlife Resources Committee would match the county’s $500,000 with plans to build the facility.”
Is this what the wildlife resources committee does? Build shooting ranges?
Then, there’s the money.
Hear that cash register ring, Ca-ching! In Cleveland County, the shooting range generates $1,000 to $1,600 a day.
Robert Pinsky, in The Singing School, writes: “The poet has something to say.”
This poet certainly does. Guns find their ways into the wrong hands. Guns are abrupt and deafening. Guns kill. Why carry a gun if you have no plans to shoot it? One answer may be for — protection. If we had reasonable gun laws, who would need protection?
Here is a poem from Wang Ping for the Orlando victims.
“All Stories Are Personal”
must be told,and retold till they blossom between our lips, take roots in the belly buttons, till the currents of sap, thicker than blood roar in our veins, till eyes can open again to the blazing sun, and the moon no longer weeps in the dreams of children, till every name, face, every shattered hope calls from the womb of memory:
“Let some goodness come out of our deaths. Let the pain of the living bear some fruit.”
The italics are from a ritual song, 300 BC.
William Stafford is singing in my church when he writes:
This is the field where the battle did not happen,
where the unknown soldier did not die
This is the field where grass joined hands,
where no monument stands,
and the only heroic thing is the sky.
Birds fly here without any sound,
unfolding their wings across the open.
No people killed — or were killed — on this ground
hallowed by neglect and an air so tame
that people celebrate it by forgetting its name.
Now, for a presidential poem from Jimmy Carter’s book of poems, Always A Reckoning:
“Life on a Killer Submarine”
I had a warm, sequestered feeling deep beneath the sea, moving silently, assessing what we could hear from far away
because we ran so quietly ourselves,
walking always in our stocking feet.
We’d listen to the wild sea sounds,
the scratch of shrimp, the bowhead’s moan,
the tantalizing songs of humpback whales.
We strained to hear all other things,
letting ocean lenses bring to us
the steady, throbbing beat of screws,
the murmurs of most distant ships or submarines that might be hunting us.
One time we heard, with perfect clarity,
a vessel’s pulse 400 miles away and remembered that, in spite of everything
we did to keep our sounds suppressed,
the gradient sea could focus, too, our muffled noise,
could let the other listeners know
where their torpedoes might be aimed.
We wanted them to understand
that we could always hear them first
and, knowing, be inclined to share
our love of solitude, our fear
that one move, threatening or wrong,
could cost the peace we yearned to keep,
and kill our hopes that they were thrilled, like us,
to hear the same whale’s song.
How does a poet fight back?
This month, visit an art museum. Stand in front of a Winslow Homer or Fitz Hugh Lane painting. Wait for the sea’s salt scent to reach you.
Listen for the scratch of shrimp or song of the whale. The Asheville Art Museum is open during renovations. Visit the River Arts District.
Meet artists, potters, woodworkers, sculptors. Watch glassblowers at work. Stand in awe.(With thanks to Joel Burgess of the Asheville Citizen Times)
I say again, Let us learn from history. And also again, Peace ~ Shalom.