A Lament for Oakland

There was a shooting,
the sounds of children playing
at the break of dawn,
outside my window.

I went out,
saw them play
by the placid lake
where the bodies lay.

Then came,
down the causeway,
the wailing sirens
to carry them away.

There I spent
the long blue day
below a yawning oak
stretching from shore to bay.

At dusk, the moon rose,
somber and cold,
and the streets full of litter
were left a-glitter.

If there was a Garden of Eden, I can not image a place more fit than my city Oakland. Yet in these 78 square miles, all the circles of Dante’s Inferno can be found with room left for all the other torments of the human soul to abound. A paradise full of devils and snares.