30 Day Picture Prompt Challenge

Heavens Weep

Heavens weep for Dominick Calhoun.
Skies shed tears of frustration
for no adult stepped up
to answer cry for help,
or listened to another child
plead for intervention.
Blackened souls clouded
investigation, but justice,
like a helium balloon,
rose unflinchingly through the storm.

Still,
the heavens weep for a four year old
whose voice was forever silenced,
whose giggle shone through the haze
of cruelty
until it could no longer
even cry out in agony.
Battled hardened ER Docs
saw no greater injuries in war;
Dominick's being far beyond torture.
Stoic chief nurse dissolved;
unable to add still more injuries
to the list.

Heavens cast down steel shards
in protest, washing the tombs,
encasing them in heaven's tears
so they can be hurt no more.

Heavens weep for Dominick Calhoun.
His mother, for lack of better term,
spends solitary years:
justice demands she be kept safe
from those incarcerated
who deem no more heinous a crime
than one who harms a child.
Her lover, elsewhere,
shares same injustice
for was he who burned, broke and shattered
all that was light and good that day.

A father lights a candle
against the darkness of the storm,
shields it against the onslaught
of grief, of guilt
that he couldn't save his child,
lost to courts that believe
a child is better off, safer,
and more loved with his mother.
Better a lowly dishwasher
than a drugged out husk
who craved everything more
than her child.

A beam of light shines down,
casting granite in silver.
Dominicks's Law now makes it a crime
to ignore a youngster
who says their baby brother
is being beaten and burned,
makes it a crime
to ignore the signs
of a battered child,
makes it a crime to chose
not to get involved
because it might be
messy or inconvenient.

Heavens hold aloft
a child's balloon,
grasped in the stone hand
of the angel sitting on Dominick's tomb.

321 words








Note: Dominick's Law came into being after he (our grand-nephew) was severely burned and beaten for six days straight until he died on April 12th, 2010

More information on Dominick's Law can be found here: http://www.mlive.com/news/flint/index.ssf/2012/06/dominicks_law_links_around_the...