Aftermath

In September, two towers fell and a plane
crashed in a Pennsylvania field, another
into the Pentagon, America’s war machine;
and three thousand screaming voices
went silent, carried into another world,
into yet another time, recorded for history,
for posterity, to be studied by eager school children
as a turning point in America’s history, a new age
shaped by tragedy and disaster, as mine was,
shaped then by a cold war, huddled below our desks 
and the death of a President, Vietnam’s raging fires.
They’ll be quizzed and tested on dates and names
and numbers, as we were, the details, the before and the after, 
but not the whys, not the whats and the wherefores since,
how we’ve changed, how we’ve become, different now.

In the aftermath of this disaster, other voices rose up, 
hateful voices against those we blamed, ”those people” 
whose skin color and origin and religion refueled a hatred 
born now of fear, a new vulnerability in our daily lives
morphing into us against them, “them” who are different, 
don’t think or feel or believe as we do, enemies facing 
each other across a Maginot line of race and creed and identity,
a battlefield on which there are no victors.

And the quiet voices, listening, are drowned out
by the vocal few who loudly call for walls and deportation,
for isolationism, nationalism, supremacy, call out for war,
those outdated ideologies that failed before in the history 
we learned, the history we forgot, shaped now by fear and hatred.

Heavenly Father

In Pollyanna’s church, the rafters
and the chandeliers quivered and shook
and rattled, the parishioners, too, reminded
by a Bible thumped of their sins,
the smallest of which equally sinful as the largest
and the punishments the same,
hell-bound, fire and brimstone,
much as my own church pounded out
a god of love meting out hell’s
eternal fury for poking my sister,
holding her doll at arms length
above my head, out of reach, her tears
falling amidst her threats of telling on me
and my rising fear, not of Mom, 
but of an eternity in hell, chained
to a fiery wall, burning and tortured,
my own toys at arms length,
just out of reach, forever, and so 
we feared Him, this Heavenly Father 
so unlike my own, quick to forgive,
slow to raise his voice or a hand,
never a belt or a switch lashed out
or an angry word spoken, no fear of him
rising up in us, shrinking back
and cowering, begging forgiveness
for transgressions innocently transgressed,
bartering with better behavior, promising reform.

So perhaps God is not like I remember Him
in those Baptist days at the Elm Street Church,
but more like my dad, quick to forgive,
patient with our humanity and imperfections,
ready to love and bring us home.

Senior Prom

Crepe paper streamers woven into a canopy of blue and white

stretched from railing to railing, basketball hoop to

basketball hoop in an ancient gymnasium, its floor sunken,

this coliseum of old victories pitting man against man

in a contest of wills, to score, to win, to rise up victorious

over our enemies, enemies only by virtue of school color and mascot,

Shipbuilders vs. Dragons, Blue and White against Orange and Black.

But that night, under those crepe paper streamers, we danced

and celebrated the victories of our own youth, our own contest

of wills, to learn, to grow, to rise up victorious over ourselves,

over those forces of childhood that propel us into adulthood.

So we danced, just one couple among the many in this ritual of

formality and farewell, farewell to youth, farewell to ourselves,

farewell to each other, and dancing close we hold on in a desperate

embrace to capture this time, make it last, forever,

the space between us filled with idle talk and chatter,

or with an awkward silence meant only to slow down time,

anything to fill that gap between us that separates, divides,

moves us apart after the last dance ends, as you go your way and me, mine,

alone out into a world we may not be ready for, not yet ready to face alone.

But for now we dance around and around that ancient gym, victorious,

two people clinging to each other, clinging to a moment we shared.

Today those memories once forgotten in the in-between of youth and age 

come alive again, detail-less memories of blue and white streamers

strung across a gymnasium and of the girl I danced close to, held close,

desperate to stay young and to keep the moment alive,

a moment of youth lost on an ancient floor of old victories.

The Loons

An early morning fog obscures the distant shore

and the island in between. Invisible in this obscurity

a loon calls out into the silence, his long, mournful cry

a glissando rising and repeating itself, echoing;

and then silence, a deep, utter silence, deafening,

but a silence broken again by his calling out once more,

or a response returned, warbling back in answer,

some tremolo’d conversation we cannot understand,

but only imagine. Its echo lingers and reverberates,

an eerie, forlorned call as we lie beneath our covers

awaiting the sun’s warmth to rouse us from our sleep,

slumbering still, a greeting this foggy morning, reminding

us where we are, here, at the lake, or perhaps it is a warning

of our intrusion into this realm we share with them:

loon and lake and us, an early morning fog, obscured.