The Kent State Monuments*

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The first was the roped-off parking lot
where dead and injured students fell.

The second was an outcry that cracked
the imagined walls of a gymnasium
designed to occupy the space and
blot out memory of the massacre.

The third is the one you see now when
you follow the path from the library past
the steel sculpture with the bullet dings
to the plain granite stone, inscribed
with the words, Inquire, Learn, Reflect,
surrounded by fifty thousand daffodils.

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* On May 4, 1970 four students were shot dead and
several wounded by National Guard troops sent to the
Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, by then Gov. Rhodes
to stop anti-war demonstrations on campus.