Early Dismissal

Two hours early they let us go that day;
I stood out in front waiting for my particular bus
as it was not among those already in the solemn procession.
The cat-calls, joking, jostling, and other signs of independence
which might have accompanied such a thing:
    "Early Dismissal",
on any other given day, were absent.
One friend, Marilyn Pontius (daughter of Ron?)
stumbled along the sidewalk, books in one hand,
mottled face buried in the other, tears
dripping from her shaking fingers,
wracked with sobs, careening
unseeingly toward some bus -
any bus - to remove her from the stark
and tragic darkness that this world had become.
In days to come - some prophet would surely have seen -
laughter and joy would return, slowly, achingly
crawling back into the shattered mechanism
that was once the heart of this nation.
Yet all such joy would be but a shadow of that previous,
a faint whisper barely covering what was lost,
and has yet to be found again
even fifty years on.