I wrote this poem on January 14, 2026, in the wake of the shooting of Renee Good in Minnesota. As a clergy person, I often feel the tension of trying to speak into grief and violence with words that can sound foreign in a world already hardened by fear, power, and the need to be right. This piece holds that tension without trying to resolve it too quickly. It names what the body remembers, what the spirit protests, and what love still insists on saying out loud.

I also shared this poem as part of a sermon recently as presented in a virtual worship experience alongside another poem, “What Mice Do,” which was already published here on the blog. I’m posting “All I Can See” as a stand-alone reflection because sometimes a poem can carry what prose cannot. My prayer is that it helps us tell the truth, honor the dead, and keep choosing love that does not look away.

All I Can See

All I can see are their eyes
All I can hear are their words
All I can do is try to speak
but it sounds like my voice is a foriegn language to their ears.

But I can hear them,
understand them
yet not understand what's happening.

All I can see is shear determination

I swear that harsh tone and words
is shaped either by a sinister smile
or an angery snear.

Ice
cold
shivers as the wind of their words rushes against my sin.

All I can see is my skin
All I can hear is my heart
All I can do is try to breath
but it sounds like their words carry full paragraphs in each syllable.

But I'm sure they can see me,
recognize fear on my face
yet not theirs, their faces are hidden to what's happening.

All I can see is a cazam of dispare
I swear that farness and nearness
is thick with tension in the geart they wear
by the thin glass of my window pane.

Ice
cold
mussles not cold for much longer in the heat of this gripped trigger.

All I can see are triggers.
All I can hear are shots
All I can do is hope it's not true
but it sounds like the loudness shook while carying an even louder silence on it's waves.

But, I can't be left to die alone
yet no one is coming
like a lynched body left behind.

All I can see is memories
I swear, those eyes that were the last I would see,
that voice that profained
the person who drove away to do more harm another day.

Ice
cold
is the winter where death comes with an extra helping of nostalgia.

May the enslaved look on us
and the ancestors give us strength.
The masked men are back and no one is safe.

Her last words were kind.
I hope mine will be too.
As I sing, and dance, and speak, and pray,
and march into church, home, store, and live fully in community

so that

All I can see in the mirror is love
All I can hear in the echo is love
All I can do in the moment is be love

so that

when the numbered days are cut short
it is not an end but a beginning
that shakes the world to wake up from the

Ice
cold
grip of hate.

Toss the masks and hoods.
and re-write the story
before we repeat it again.