The Drums on Television

I overheard another boy
in gym class say
"he" was shot in Texas
not knowing who they spoke of
and later the intercom
Principle Williams said "Listen,
you'll hear a bit of history"
and Walter Cronkite told my English class
The President was dead
Crouching on the street corner
Lenny and I folded the papers tight
the headlines leaving our fingertips
smudged in black
A man walked by
and asked us what we thought
about the assassination
I remember Lenny and I looked at each other
burst into raucous laughter
too jaded at 12 to feel pain
at a great man's death
And my parents speaking in undertones
Grandparents coming to town
as if Death had visited our own family
Down that road the plumed horses
The caissons
The White Horse riderless
Down that road they took him
as they have taken my grandparents
Principle Williams, my parents
until in my mind those days, too, lie entombed
painted in wet gray tones
framed in barren branches
but most of all
at the dark end of my twelfth year
there was pumped into my soul the cadence of drums
that for hours on end beat from televisions