A Warrior's Prayer

Blessed Artemis, Goddess of the Hunt and Innocence,
I pray you take under your silver mantle the hearts and bodies of the little ones
who have no family.
The wee ones with no mother or father, lost to violence or diease
or negligence.
Protect them, oh Eye of the Night! Keep them safe as they cannot for themselves.
Harbour them in the shelter of your sight, the strength of your bow,
the power of your heart. Protect them as a mother bear protects her cubs,
with love and ferocity.
Keep them, O Sacred one, keep them safe and in your soul.
Guide them to peaceful rest where they may forget for a time the horrors they have seen,
the bodies, the blood, the fires and famine, forget their empty bellies and their lonely arms.
Give them what their families cannot, Great One, do what we cannot, or will not.
Fill their bodies with strength to fight or flee as a hare might
Fill their minds with clarity and good thoughts
Fill their hearts with love to block the poison neglect and violence make, so there is no room for aught but love.
Keep them, keep them safe for us, those who cannot help. Only your grace is immense enough to reach so far and so widely.
By your grace are they saved.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-uci-shooting15-2009sep15,0,5698283.story

"A graduate student involved in a custody dispute shot and killed his ex-wife Sunday evening just outside a student and family housing complex, police said Monday.

Brian Benedict, 35, was arrested on suspicion of killing Rebecca Benedict, 30. The couple's 4-year-old son was nearby when the shooting occurred, police said. It was the first homicide in campus history, officials said."

What did he see, that little boy? Will his last memory of his mother forever be of her bathed in blood, gasping on the sidewalk? The smell of gunpowder and the roar of its' release loud in his ears? Will four short years, and gods, they are so short, of good memories be enough to overcome one moment of senseless cataclysm? Time will blunt the sharp and jagged edges of his memory but what he saw, what he witnessed, will stay with him forever. Whenever he wakes in the night wanting his mum, she wont be there.