November 1963

Once, when you were

So near the Sun

As with eagle's wings,

Another Icarus so you seemed,

On a late November day

When we found ourselves

In free fall

Along a nasty road

Best not taken

And the hapless journey

Has continued ever since.

I was in Fifth Grade

When the world went hush

Between each breaking bulletin.

Such a silence, such a stillness

Except for a lone girl

In the back of the classroom

Softly weeping into a grammar book

She hadn't opened since last June.

Tarnished armor and tattered tales

Cobbled into a mythic flame.

A legacy of images liberally mixed

With facts as well as fiction

In a Hollywood blender,

Half tawdry in its grandeur.

It was the first revolution

Broadcast live in Black 'n White

With wyrd sister Cronkite

Spinning a convoluted tale

Of mindless mad obsession

That still plays like the climax

Of Oz where the man behind

The curtain stands naked

But unseen.

Devote we were

In those golden days,

At prayer every week

In the school house basement

With our heads between our knees

In quiet meditation to

The holy missiles that

Moved like shadows

In our dreams.

Those were the wonder years

Of the American century

As it glimmered and flared

Like a bursting star.

And even you were like a nova,

Intense and brilliant

For one brief moment

Then quickly dimming

Like sullen embers

Turning cold against the night.

Once, after a flood,

I found an old Civil Defense

Barrel water logged and open

And spilling out its treasures

For life in Armageddon.

A bottle of stale water and

A pack of moldy crackers

And illustrated instructions

For turning the barrel into

A post-atomic toilet.

It was an age both different

And the same.

In a single day was

Childhood's end

As cynics came to play.

It really wasn't the end of

Innocence for that had

Vanished long ago.

It was the end of something

Undefined.

The end of some conviction

Yet divined.