And then i

Scanned the roofs for snipers,
As though I knew how. Old reflex kicking in: 7th and race in view of the race st buildings. None on roofs. None in windows. Maybe. Behind the tint, who knows? And the trees: the tiny snipers hiding behind leaves, and branches, distributed fibonacci-wise as nature taught them...
Why was I searching? Wanting the shot, or dreading it? As voices rose and fell, one poet or another reading, speaking, laughing, waiting, voices in the grass taking their pot-shots, papers falling like magazines, words rapport in the chambers, speed of sound...
I rose and fell, left the side of my companion She, found the side of it my father, once my father, now my father, him in this crowd known and hugged and heard by hundreds, half-wholly, him half-holy... I could claim his shoulder without asking. Did so. Stayed. Observed a circle drawn in sitting bodies, empty hanging from ears, or full eating under ears, or dying, one too many words in the chest...
I scanned the roofs, the leafs, I named the bodies, "c.a." "f.s" "She" "father" "absent she" "r.m", "eating man", "asshole", "beauty", one whose toothy smile would blind an aiming bird in its nest... And waited for the echo to write itself?