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| Loui Jover is an Australian artist who uses printed paper for his backgrounds. https://www.saatchiart.com/louijover |
High above the frozen earth, a plane went mad and
plunged into a cornfield. Three musicians and their pilot
perished but their songs are sung and listened to today,
just shy of sixty years into the future
from that fatal wintry night.
It feels like that today, a heaviness, the silence
that can be so loud. Like something more
has happened than the facts themselves.
The facts are bad enough. Five people dead.
The day Death visited the newsroom, aiming bullets
just as quickly as the targets used to type their
stories (stories that will live far longer, like the music,
than they would have guessed) the aftershocks
were felt by thousands more. Scattered 'round the world
are newsrooms bleeding words and punctuation,
all the air knocked out, and even far removed,
the very thought of ink and blood combined
gives old reporters long retired a heaviness of heart.
(c) Ellen Gillette, 2018.
For some reason Don McLean's song "American Pie" came to mind, this day after the Maryland shootings at the Capital Gazette, especially the line about the day the music died, February 3, 1959 - Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper, Ritchie Valens, and pilot Roger Peterson died in a plane crash. Their music lives on, and the friends and families of the Maryland victims will keep their memories alive. But so sad, especially for my journalist friends.
