Dec 2013
Fifty years ago today
A half century. Yes--seems like a long time when we say it that way, sublimely forgetting time is a dimension we chop cheaply for convenience. In earth time, in galaxy time, the vast blue stretch since the cosmos’ first coding coughing of carbon, that five decades has been but a clipped comma in a thousand page tome, with a single stout capital letter being the history of a country, and a verbose sentence or two being the tale of our two legged species. For me, the 50 years since that day has been most of my book--nearly all that has been written since the dawn of light.
I was on the Kanto plains of Japan, so it was already Christmas--though I guess my world has always spun faster than most. During the night, my father had assembled my new black three speed 26 inch Raleigh English racer, a serious upgrade from my red 24 inch Schwinn, my first bike, long lost to spinning memory, and likely the property of some dump in the heartland.
The new bike stood beside the table in our large combination kitchen/dining room of our temporary officer quarters. I can’t recall if it was too cold to ride that day, but I probably ventured out, either in the real rays of the sun or in the land of imagination, the two being of equal measure in the realm of memory.
A month before, my father woke me with the news of Kennedy’s assassination. Like others who were old enough to remember, the events of that November day have much crisper edges than any other, including the Raleigh racer Christmas or any Christmas I can recollect.
Tomorrow is another Christmas. I won’t look at that day too much when I am walking in the park this afternoon, for tomorrow is not waiting for me at all. It will be there even if I am again dancing with stardust. More likely, I will be here, on the same rolling rock, eating the flesh of a fallen gobbler and making new memories I will recall only hazily in fifty hours. And if I were promised another fifty marching years, I might lament their passing before they arrived, knowing full well they too would be filled with forgetting.
A half century. Yes--seems like a long time when we say it that way, sublimely forgetting time is a dimension we chop cheaply for convenience. In earth time, in galaxy time, the vast blue stretch since the cosmos’ first coding coughing of carbon, that five decades has been but a clipped comma in a thousand page tome, with a single stout capital letter being the history of a country, and a verbose sentence or two being the tale of our two legged species. For me, the 50 years since that day has been most of my book--nearly all that has been written since the dawn of light.
I was on the Kanto plains of Japan, so it was already Christmas--though I guess my world has always spun faster than most. During the night, my father had assembled my new black three speed 26 inch Raleigh English racer, a serious upgrade from my red 24 inch Schwinn, my first bike, long lost to spinning memory, and likely the property of some dump in the heartland.
The new bike stood beside the table in our large combination kitchen/dining room of our temporary officer quarters. I can’t recall if it was too cold to ride that day, but I probably ventured out, either in the real rays of the sun or in the land of imagination, the two being of equal measure in the realm of memory.
A month before, my father woke me with the news of Kennedy’s assassination. Like others who were old enough to remember, the events of that November day have much crisper edges than any other, including the Raleigh racer Christmas or any Christmas I can recollect.
Tomorrow is another Christmas. I won’t look at that day too much when I am walking in the park this afternoon, for tomorrow is not waiting for me at all. It will be there even if I am again dancing with stardust. More likely, I will be here, on the same rolling rock, eating the flesh of a fallen gobbler and making new memories I will recall only hazily in fifty hours. And if I were promised another fifty marching years, I might lament their passing before they arrived, knowing full well they too would be filled with forgetting.
written yesterday
Written by
spysgrandson
Please log in to view and add comments on poems
