PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

I didn’t know him well,

We were different he and I.

Athletically he spent his days,

But me, I’d rather die.



I saw him on that fateful day,

Laughing with a friend.

I passed by without a word;

That night he met his end.



The next day, the school

Was a sea of salty tears.

Sobs, like moaning ocean winds,

Were all that you could hear.



I saw the puffy faces,

I saw the red-rimmed eyes.

I saw it all quite clearly:

My eyes were desert-dry.



All those closest to him

Were not in school that day;

They met with his family

And together they all prayed.



So those whose streaming tears

Filled the classrooms and the halls

Wept for the loss of a young boy’s life,

Not the boy at all.



They hadn’t known him either,

But they cried their eyes to red.

I, too, felt great sadness,

But tears do nothing for the dead.



All those in the weeping throng

Would find that, with some time,

Their lives would go on unperturbed,

And so, I knew, would mine.



I sat at his funeral,

I heard his family speak.

They were very well composed,

Were not shaky, faint or weak.



But as he was borne away

In the pallbearers’ hands,

His mother just gave up the fight,

Collapsed, and could not stand.



Supported by her daughters,

She followed close behind.

All three sobbed bitterly,

But no comfort could they find.



They would not forget,

Their lives would never be the same,

And now my tears did come,

But they bore with them no shame.



As I saw his sobbing parents,

Weeping sisters, crying friends,

I saw that they were changed,

That their hearts would never mend.



Then I could see no more,

With tears I was blind;

I cried, not for the departed,

But for those he left behind.