On the 10 Year Anniversary...

Paul Wellstone - October 25, 2002

On a gray, sleety October day,

the plane goes down in the north woods

with the large-hearted senator

whose decency and respect for old ideals

made half the citizens almost happy

to be Americans in a dark time.

Down went his wife and his daughter too,

three campaign workers, two pilots, 

eight in all, the radio says,

neglecting the ninth seat where Death

dressed in an ordinary suit

sat watching for his chance

to do a morning's harvesting.

Do you think he wasn't there

hitching a ride, invisible, just as 

he sat in the box at Ford's Theatre,

held open the convertible door in Dallas?

He sits in the front seat of your car, too,

or waits feigning sleep with his head

resting on the next pillow in your bed. 

So we go on to write the same poem,

sing the same sad song yet once more

not for the dead who have gone

over to the insensible kingdom

but for us who must now carry on

without them. This time, as so often

before, Death snatched a big one

when we could not stand to lose

his voice, which spoke, not alone,

but for us millions who longed

for a world green, alive, about to bloom.

~ Bill Holm, Playing the Black Piano/The Chain Letter of the Soul


I miss both of these voices.