5458. JUXTAPOSED

JUXTAPOSED

I never minded anything, just took it all in

stride : those old egg-salad headache Fridays

and the years of blistering afternoon migraines;

headaches and brain-waves, tests for this and that;

walking blindly home in the hot June heat. I never

minded anything, just took it all in stride.

-

Then it all passed, just like that : Life Magazine

long afternoons on a cooling kitchen table, penning

a notebook, drawing another. Pictures of cars.

Pictures of mother. Gulf of Tonkin on the television.

What madness transpired, I only found out later.

-

The fireworks were in Merril Park; some Fourth of

July crap I bicycled to. Lying on my back, looking 

straight up in the crowded, big field  -  a million loads

of color in the darkening sky. Some ooh'd, some aah'd,

and I, I'd just stay there, looking up at the nighttime sky.