Word Like Arrows, Indeed.

I have a handy stack of bookmarks of all kinds in each room where there are books in my house. I must have grabbed this one off the top of a pile and stuck it in my book du jour, knowing I'd need it later. I didn't read the bookmark until today, and now I'd like to share it with you here.

This is from University of Arizona Arts Reach Educational Writing Program. The Project was called Words Like Arrows, and was associated with the Arizona State Museum at the University of Arizona. The following poem was printed in When the Rain Sings, Simon and Schuster, 1999.

Divorce

I was sad
as a typhoon coming
closer and closer.
I didn't
have a heart
to hold onto.
It sounded like
too much peace and quiet.
It tasted like
a hot mint in my mouth.
It looked like
lightening beside me
when my mom and dad
got divorced.

--Davina Valencia (Yaqui)
Grade 4 Age 10
Lawrence Elementary School
Tucson, Arizona

Copyright 1999. All rights reserved by the artist.
(I hope I'm not infringing on those rights by posting this here, but the effect of this enormous little poem on me has been astounding.)

This is the reason we started writing on cave walls, the reason behind the graffitti, the reason why Writer's Market is such an outstanding sales success, the reason blogging has proliferated. We have important messages to share.

A long slim piece of cardstock can carry words like arrows straight to our hearts and/or that place within us that is stirred to emotion and action and awe and grief. We must keep writing. We must write in any medium possible. We never know how far our words must travel to have their impact on one particular person at one particular time in her life when the words are most needed, somehow, even if they cause so much pain that person sinks to her knees to kneel on the floor in silent but keening grief and resolve to do more, to do better, to do whatever it takes to right the wrongs we perpetrate upon the children of our planet.