After the news comes the truth

Someone I know in Chicago, near the line with Skokie,

was shot five times by a racist maniac.

The fact is numbing.  The news at first was pokey,

no names, and though I knew the streets, I lacked

sophistication and did not connect the act

to the person.  It took four weeks of travel to see.

A message on paper naming the victim: fact.

And, oh, then the five shots in Chicago... and we

had talked together, eaten, seen the sights

a day or two before this incident.

But could someone I know, like you, be meant

in the news of that shooting?  All those other nights

I never dreamed of it, a month of innocence,

while you lay silent in the hospital questioning sense.