“An August Day in Austin” Poem by Lou Taylor:
White hot August day
Scorching even for Texas
Summer School offers respite from the inferno
Newlyweds – we are learning
To share a life
I’ll meet you at the car at noon
Let’s not make anyone wait
In this heat
Be there at noon sharp
The door of the Experimental Science
building is blocked by
Terrified students
Cowering in the hallway,
listening to radio
Reports of carnage outside
The back door offers escape
to the parking lot – mustn’t be late
Soft pop pop pop of ricocheting bullets
Make me seek refuge in the cool hallway
Forty-nine summers
Separate me from that August day
Gone is the blink of an eye
–––––
It all began with the shooting from the University of Texas tower in August of 1966. It was the first time a person opened fire on a campus and began indiscriminately killing people.
Nowadays, the names of American schools with multiple murders go by in a blur. Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, Columbine, Red Lake, Nickel Mines, Northern Illinois, West Paducah, Craighead County, Santee, and on and on. The list of campuses including universities, elementary schools, and business colleges with active shooters firing multiple shots exceeds 150.
And so it’s this month of August we remember this tragedy and those that followed. We remember the lessons learned. A website for Alamo College instructs students and staff to think, plan, and prepare in order to survive an active shooter. A video, “Surviving an Active Shooter Event,” is worth watching. Run if you can, hide if you can’t get away, fight only if you must.
Get help for anyone who is thinking of harming himself or others. Know what to do in case of an active shooter. Have a safe semester.
Lou Taylor is a native Texan who began writing poetry late in life. She has worked for the Episcopal Church in Louisiana and Texas. Currently she serves as Executive Director of Voices de la Luna: A Quarterly Poetry and Arts Magazine. She lives in San Antonio and has two grown sons and three grandsons.
*Featured/top image: The University of Texas tower. Photo by Flickr user Derek Key.
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nice poem. I remember as a kid in the summer home from school in the afternoon hearing that come on the radio and later at UT checking out the bullet holes.. and at that time they still had the library stacks in the Tower.
I wonder how much those instructions on how to act will change… (Run if you can, hide if you can’t get away, fight only if you must.). The train guys in France are being hailed as NOT running or standing by (some other American was quoted as telling them to hide), and in the aftermath of 9-11, they say that the 3rd plane was thwarted only because some people didn’t sit still, which was what the “standard operating procedure” had been and was done on plane 1 and 2. What happens when 100 people rush a shooter? It’s that or 6 crazy guys who carry loaded guns everywhere shooting across the crowd at each other toward the shooter from opposite sides in the dark like Rick Perry wants to happen.