I was afraid of airplanes when they flew overhead
During the summer of 1962
The missiles of October had not yet been deployed
I knew that America was at war with the powers of darkness
Who trained ungodly weapons on our beautiful land and its people
And I had learned at Our Lady of Sorrows
To duck and cover under my sinfully messy desk
Despite the manifest evidence of the black and white footage
That showed a house blown like dandelion in the vengeful wind
I should have realized the futility of evasion
What I did realize was that I was scared
Of Piper Cub and Boeing 707
Which wanted to drop so I thought an atom bomb
And so I would run into the house

I should have realized that we lived
In the most segregated city in America
I don’t suppose I knew what segregation is
I should have known but my reasoning powers
Were rudimentary at best
And have they improved all that much
I asked my parents why a drinking fountain labeled Colored
Was mounted next to one labeled White
At Parisian’s downtown
But I don’t remember the answer
I used to ride my bike up to Ray’s house
To play with him superheroes on the brick barbecue
I once picked up a cigarette butt from the gutter
And brought it up to my mouth
Ray said ooh a nigger smoked that
You’re a nigger he chanted several times
Like I’d caught some vile disease from the recognizably filthy refuse
I don’t recall any resultant breach in our relationship
But I knew that I had been bullied
I think I knew the meaning of a bully’s word

We lived in Birmingham
Because my father was a scientist at a research institution there
Who would achieve some measure of fame apparently
Receiving letters from around the world
For his work on life-saving medicines
He had a black scrapbook that we saw on rare occasions
Dad thinner than now having drinks with a pretty woman
Not my mother
A yellowed newspaper clipping with a photo
Of an aircraft carrier billowing smoke
I didn’t know until I had kids of my own
That my father had been torn apart his face mostly
Behind an anti-aircraft gun on the deck of the Saratoga
The kamikaze keeps coming even after you’ve killed the pilot
And when it strikes the flight deck the flames and the shrapnel fly
I’m poor at putting two and two together
The messy desk and the shredded house
The cigarette butt and the drinking fountains
The yellowed clipping and the facial scars
Not noticeable to me I knew no other
But the reconstruction must have been masterful

I’ve had traumas in my life but nothing like that
Now that he’s gone I wonder how he escaped
Being eaten alive by post-traumatic stress
But he claimed and I must believe him
That after the war he wanted nothing but to build a life
To forget about politics and foreign affairs
So he and my mother also a navy veteran
Took Uncle Sam up on the offer of education
My mother by consensus the stronger in science
The story was that she had carried him
Through the labs and the math in junior college
Though he was said to be gifted in language
So when the time came to matriculate
At the state university
And to enter into the state of matrimony
My mother had babies and suppressed her dream
Of becoming that rarity a woman scientist

Her childhood had been an ordeal of grinding poverty
On the northern shore of Lake Okeechobee
During the worst of the great depression
Wild country that left her with scars of her own
The screech of the panther
Made her phobic of cats her life long
She hid she said from her numerous siblings
By climbing a tree to read books of science there
Left home and finished high school in a bigger town
Well in a town
She hadn’t lived in a town
Jumped at the chance to rivet aircraft wings at Curtiss-Wright
And served as corpsman in the big hospital
At coastal California that received the wounded from the Pacific theater
Not my father
And once her children were in school
She went back to college and earned a degree
In medical technology and worked in that field for decades
But I always had the feeling
That a talented women remained in the shadow
Of her husband

When I finished high school
America was again at war
My father had not resisted or resented America’s command
To fight the Japanese
Who had wounded the navy
In which he had already enlisted
And sad to say he endorsed the war’s horrid end
Like most of those with his experience
The nuclear option that made me fear commercial aviation
We don’t make inventions without using them apparently
And thus when I registered for the draft
I did so with trepidation like others of my age
For America had on this occasion not been attacked
But had instead intervened in at most a civil war
And the cold war had evolved into a proxy war
And the nuclear threat continuously loomed
But when my turn arrived a lottery had been instituted
And I had the shameful good luck
To score a number that spared my call-up
I attended two of the great rock festivals
And in my hometown coliseum heard the like of
Led Zeppelin and James Brown

And
After 1961 it was all Ray Charles
After 1962 it was all Johnny Cash
After 1963 it was all R&B and sweet soul music
Whole stables not just labels Motown Atlantic Stax
After 1964 it was all the Beatles
After 1965 it was all the Stones
In 1966 I got a Gibson acoustic like Johnny Cash
After 1967 it was all Jimi Hendrix
In 1968 it was totally weird and I was just starting high school
In 1969 I got a Wurlizter piano like Ray Charles
In 1970 I played in fish camps and enlisted mens’ clubs
And in 1971 CYO Knights of Columbus fratty boys and sorority girls
And in 1972 I got a Gibson SG like Clapton Townshend and Santana
And after 1973 it was all a rush a mostly-pleasant multicolored blur

And
Contraception was if not readily available
Then certainly with little trouble getatable
But we didn’t bother and relied on more primitive methods
And the Beloved and I became sexually active far too young
But we survived the experience and enjoyed ourselves quite a lot
Though we have found some awkwardness in more recent times
Explaining responsibility to our adolescent children
And anybody into music especially Black music
Got into pot as I did years before beer
Although the taste for alcohol grew and grew and grew

And
I never lost my childish fears
But on the contrary my anxiety grew
As I became aware that the future was a responsibility
That I was inadequate to bear
And the disillusionment that lots of folks didn’t particularly get off on music
That on the contrary they cared about control victory and suck-cess
And I saw through the porthole of my yellow submarine
A world submerged in violence hatred and selfishness
A culture that cared about winning about profit about consumption
An America where the president could be gunned down in a car
Where beautiful people old and young could be gunned down day after day
And high and dry and here we are as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight
Where ignorant armies clash by night

America potentate of folly
Empire of extremes
Sybaritic spaceflight hobbyists
Hungry children nodding off during Zoom class
Missile silos long guns hand guns and Bowie knives
Arming the populace many times over
Methane coal gasoline and plastics
Atoms for peace and physics for war
Romance of bloodshed
Theater of meretricious wealth
Technology of alienation and baleful fantasy
Apotheosis of meanness and greed
Boundless hypocrisy of religion and command
Heedless depletion of humanity and nature
Lust for power celebration of enslavement
Shameless defilement of the oracle of freedom
Crushing the life out of the man on the street
Impaling with lead a woman at bedtime
A reality of false images screaming for attention
Promise forsaken
Decency forsworn

And yet
And yet
My father wrote poems in advanced old age
And in similar age my mother gave me a squib of cookie dough
Though I long had kids of my own
And good music never dies
A good movie a good meal with family and friends never dies
Truth justice peace and love never die not completely
And though harried and wounded insulted and robbed
Glorious nature never dies
Birdsongs radiant flowers rising clouds pregnant with rain
This too is reality my skeptical friend
Horror irrefutably abounds
There is no restitution possible for the crimes of millenia
Though we might take steps for repair
The kamikaze pilot died that very day
Mere seconds before he wounded my father grievously
And set the ship ablaze that never sank
And no rescue for those below deck
And was it he
Spirit of the wind
It wasn’t only he
He did what he believed hateful falsehood
Was right
Obeying the unquestioned mandate of his culture
And let us ceaselessly question the mandates of this culture of America
For no day has gone by without some horrific violation of personal dignity
Some horrible mistake
And yet
The eternal glow of a child’s fear and sorrow and delight
For children too experience these extravagances
Bird flower cloud moon wind rain and star
Mountain river refreshing forest teeming saltmarsh
America does not own them but drinks in their beneficence
The Beloved her tender immortal kiss