YOUNGSTOWN Peace versus war: poem's verses soar

His poem has taken a young man to Washington to meet top black leaders.
By ROGER G. SMITH
CITY HALL REPORTER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Daniel Colvin lay in bed in February and wrote a poem.
The North Side teen and his friends were talking just before the start of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. They wondered how they could kill, considering upbringings that stressed peace.
"In our heads, we hope that peace would be attainable," he said.
Colvin, 19, now a freshman at Kent State University studying architecture, penned "Armed with a Conscience."
The story, told through a dream, is about two reluctant, opposing soldiers meeting on a battlefield. It's a perspective on the horrors of war and the merits of peace.
Colvin has written many poems and didn't think much more about it.
But "Armed with a Conscience" got around.
In the intervening months, his 629-word poem has taken him from a Veteran of Foreign Wars post all the way to Washington recently for meetings with some of the nation's top black leaders.
Friday, the Mayor's Task Force on Crime and Violence Prevention and city council honored Colvin and his work.
The Washington trip was happenstance.
Word of Colvin's work spread, and he was asked to read "Armed with a Conscience" at a Memorial Day event at the Donald Lockett VFW Post 6488.
Colvin was nervous that veterans wouldn't like his poem because the point was peace. He got the opposite reaction. One veteran said the poem reflected exactly what he felt as a soldier.
"It's the conscience of a combat veteran," said Herman Adams, a Post 6488 leader. "To us, we felt it was a young man expressing his feelings and his conscience."
Congressman present
Among the Memorial Day guests was U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan of Niles, D-17th.
Ryan was impressed that such a young man was so in touch with the war and had such a well-thought-out opinion. With the country split over the issue, the poem gives voice to those who think the war is a bad idea, he said.
"I thought it was just phenomenal," Ryan said. "It really illustrated the devastation that war has on society."
Ryan entered the poem into the Congressional Record and arranged for Colvin to travel to Washington.
Black luminaries
Colvin met with several black luminaries, including Congressman John Lewis, a Georgia Democrat who marched on Washington with Martin Luther King Jr.
"It felt like we stepped into a history book," Colvin said.
Colvin will be a leader in his own right someday, said the Rev. Alfred Coward, chairman of the mayor's task force.
The Rev. Mr. Coward had Colvin read his poem to the congregation at Mount Calvary Pentecostal Church.
"He almost brought me to tears. It was almost hard to preach after that," Mr. Coward said. "He's a young man of character."
Colvin said writing the poem was no big deal.
He just wants people to remember what it's about so neither Sept. 11 nor the fact that soldiers continue sacrificing is forgotten.
"I know it's bigger than I am," he said. "I just laid on my bed and wrote a poem."