BOLINAS: At 9:28 a.m. someone called rambling about “too many aircraft flying overhead.”
With a cup of Folger’s coffee in a kitten mug, Rosemary primly sat on the front edge of her couch cushion soaking up Fox and Friends. Steve Doocy’s pristine, white skin glowed on the screen, reflecting in Rosemary’s eyes. Tax cuts, energy, lift the American spirits.
“Apparently some Muslims are angry over the fact that a company from Michigan has been putting little coded Bible passages in their sights. See, there’s this kind of serial number followed by ‘J8:12’ which means John 8:12. But what do Muslims say right before they blow themselves up? Allah akbar. Well if anybody’s making this a religious thing… then they started it.”
Rosemary sincerely believed that eventually Christians would win the cultural war, and she felt soothed inside and out, the mug of coffee warm to the touch, the message feeding her through the television speakers reassuring. She was roused, nearly titillated by the mixture of caffeine and clean, neatly-trimmed American wholesomeness. And she was excited that Glenn Beck would be the next guest on this morning’s program. He was coming on to reveal the latest twist in the leftist plot to corrode American strength.
“When Barack Obama said he promised ‘fundamental transformation,’ this is what you get. This man he has appointed is an avowed communist with ties to Al Qaeda. These people are revolutionaries, they are anti-capitalist, and they have millions and millions, maybe billions of dollars at their disposal.”
Al Qaeda. The words chilled Rosemary’s inner glow. Now what stimulated her was not the pride in her country nor merely the caffeine in her mug. It was fear, jolting through her body, attacking her nerves, working its way through her bloodstream, and lodging himself in her gut. Anxiety gripped her stomach, its steely knuckles whitening as hers did the same around her mug, obscuring the kitten’s face.
Rosemary flicked off the television and walked to the window, mug in hand. Across the street Mrs. Hernandez was trimming hedges in the front yard, her hair tied back and covered with a bandana adorned with a flag pattern that Rosemary didn’t recognize. But there certainly were no stars and stripes.
Overhead a jet divided the sky, leaving its white stream across the blue like a child coloring with black crayon on a clean white wall. Nine eleven. Rosemary watched Mrs. Hernandez, anxiety digging his claws into her, drawing blood.
Rosemary stepped outside to check for the day’s mail. Nothing yet. But she monitored Mrs. Hernandez from her sidewalk, and suspicion joined anxiety in assaulting Rosemary’s senses. Another plane crossed the sky, and Rosemary turned briskly and marched back into her house to make a call.
“Excuse me, but just why are there so many aircraft flying over my house this morning? This is our America, and how can a good, decent woman enjoy her morning with all these dark, dangerous men, these… these threats to our security sullying everything?”
Exasperation yellowed her whining voice, and with each emphasized, pleading word, Rosemary came closer to tears.
A Gibson flat top acoustic guitar
its model and year forgotten
and its body cracked and stained
from years worth of water wear
and untold smoky sixties jam sessions.
The axe falls into my high school hands
having passed from my father’s into my uncle’s.
The instrument remained with my father’s brother
for the rest of his life, for about forty years.
I still am not sure: did he die from the pills
lifted from our cupboard on visits?
Or had the manic depression wound
him like a steel string to the breaking point?
He had not only an axe but a gun.
After the beat of his heart had stopped
the axe became mine, looted from another
brother’s home. I stepped over shards of a life,
through what escaped pawning,
to seize and wield this weathered weapon.
The neck fit my hand
perfectly. It was always my guitar.
When I held the axe, and my fingers depressed
the old strings, unchanged since my father’s youth,
the grime and grease and rust and grayness
of family hands passed to mine, my fingers stained
with every note, every chord.
I wash the marks from my skin
but the rusty odor of my heirloom lingers.
“Great good can yet be brought out of all this tragedy, and of all the nations on earth today, America is in the best position to help us lead these people to the knowledge, love, and service of the one true God.” - Johannes Siemes, SJ, professor of philosophy at Sophia University,1945.
We showed them Japs
the Father and the Son
in the Fat Man and the Little Boy.
When John baptized Jesus the sky tore
open and the Spirit descended upon Him
as a dove. Again We rend the Heavens,
and the Spirit swooped down to deliver
His love, incinerating souls
with a solar embrace. Stained glass,
sanguine shards stigmatized,
and the Spirit radiated
into disciples darkened, anointed
by rain black with sacramental ash.
The blessings of the Lord linger for lifetimes.
