On The First Day of Summer, One Wish: Peace
On this first day of summer, I wish that hope, conscience and a will to save its soul would grip this shameless city. That this would not turn out to be just another season of the same old, same old
By John W. Fountain
ON THIS FIRST DAY of summer, I wish the shooting would finally and completely stop. That seven-year-old little boys were no longer felled by stray gunshots—their sweet dreams left to fade, dry, rot.
As the sun shines, breathing winds of a new season, of summer-drenched hot days ahead, my wish, my hope, is that they will be less filled with dread.
That the Grim Reaper would instead take a holiday. Rather than the toll of murder here mount day by day in this soulless yet shimmering city. Where there is no respect for the innocent or young. Where mass shootings rise from young killers who live—and die—by the gun.
Who’s sons? Our sons.
Who’s tears? Our tears. For too many years now.
Hundreds slain—and thousands shot—here each year like northern “strange fruit” on brick city tree-lined streets. No longer “strange fruit” on Southern poplar trees.
There are no KKK lynch mobs here. Just people who look strangely like me here. Black like me here. Murdering people Black like “we” here. Cascading fears.
Self-cannibalization. Genocidal infatuation that has carved rivers of blood that snake from Roseland to Englewood, to Garfield. From the West Side to the South Side and back again—from North Lawndale and Austin to Auburn Gresham.
Damn!
LIKE LANGSTON HUGHES, I too have known rivers: Rivers of pain that bend and crest, flowing from human veins. Rivers of tears that seep deep, unearthing memories of those slain and previously committed to the ground as premature death by homicide remains ceaseless and abounds, causing new waters to run from mourners’ eyes and muddy rivers to rise.
If there is a God, I cannot hear Him speak. As hearse wheels roll, I hear mothers weep, and what remains of the soul of a city hiss and seep like air from an aged punctured tire. This city is on fire. Her soul ablaze and spitting flames of a yellow-orange and red terrifying haze, with billowing smoke that reeks of sulfur and the dead.
Not the entire city. But the city within a city, where shell casings litter the pavement like fallen metal stiff cicadas. Where life and murder are as inevitable as the summer solstice and the warming rippling summertime waters that glimmer on a picture-perfect-postcard lakefront.
I wish the beauty of the Chi did not so cruelly lie about the ugly truth that lies within. About this dreadful 5th Commandment sin and violent siege against “community,” peace and posterity that are allowed to exist within and ravage the “Cold Coast”—far from invisible walls of the city’s Gold Coast.
Far beyond the buzzing NASCAR track. Beyond Lollapalooza fare. Beyond the Democratic National Convention’s glare. Safe from mention in this still segregated city, of no mercy and no pity.
But on this first day of summer, I wish that hope, conscience and a will to save its soul would grip this shameless city. That this would not turn out to be just another season of the same old, same old. Of outrage—but few solutions—by the powers that be. Of the tale of a city whose love seems to have waxed so cold and whose heart appears to be empty.
Of the excuse making, finger-pointing and hand-wringing that I have witnessed for decades now as a native son. Of futile press conferences by politicians and police and of the weekend body count of killers with guns.
On this the first day of summer, I wish to hear the sound of children playing in the streets. The stamp and slap of little girls jumping double Dutch rope in the streets. The symphony of basketballs bouncing, of white water spraying and of children playing as they frolic and soothe from summer’s heat. I wish, I hope, and I pray for peace.
My condolences and prayers to the family of Jai'mani Amir Rivera, 7, fatally wounded Tuesday on the city’s West Side moments after leaving his home to visit a neighbor in what police have said appears to be a case in which the victim may have been struck by “random gunfire.” The slaying followed a violent Father’s Day weekend in Chicago where at least 72 people were shot, at least eight of them fatally.
Email: Author@johnwfountain.com
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