The Leap From Imagination
Author: Bill Roberts
I was mad.
The enemy had humiliated me
and I needed to retaliate.
My thought process wasn’t working too well
but I settled on a hand grenade.
I pulled the pin -
actually a broken shoelace -
and tossed the grenade -
one of my worn-out tennis shoes -
into the nest of unsuspecting Japs -
the enemy in 1945 -
masquerading as my new, third-grade
classmates who’d laughed at something
I said when introduced to them
the previous day.
No harm was done.
The teacher deposited the smelly sneaker
in her trash can
and marked me down as tardy.
Kids still see other kids as the enemy -
as I had done -
but sometimes react differently.
It’s not make-believe any longer.
They go after their schoolmates
with real guns,
live ammunition,
intending to inflict real damage.
Years back we relied on our imagination.
We’ve come a long way since 1945.
(Published in George & Mertie’s Place, Vol. 4, Issue 9, October 1998 – magazine now defunct)
Note: This poem was written after several shootings occurred in the South, schoolkids killing other schoolkids, making we wonder what it was about the South that caused such carnage. I’d done some contract work in South Carolina and knew how fond the populace in general was of guns – a gun culture, I thought. Shortsightedly I also thought, surely something so awful couldn’t happen in Colorado. The poem was published before the massacre at Columbine High School, not fifteen miles from where I live.
