Fire in the Sky

Through the Burn

I was a kid.

What did I know?

It was the 4th of July.
My brother and I wanted to go
to that night's fireworks
in town.

I pestered dad all day
but never got any reply.
The closer it came to dark
the more quiet
the more sullen
dad became.

This was wholly unlike him.

But I persisted
notching up my plea 
by the minute.

The standoff ended in the kitchen.

He was strangely bent and bowed
and had his fill of my persistence.
Dad lit an entire book of matches.
They flared with alarming menace.

There's your damn fireworks! he said
throwing the flame into the sink.
Sulfur hung in the air.
That moment chars my memory yet.
 
He did a quick about face
disappearing down the hall
into his room
slamming the door.

I was hurt.
Stunned.
Confused.
I'd never seen dad like this
and it was because
I'd pushed him over some invisible chasm
I could not understand.

That unspoken guilt festered in me
a very long time.

Two decades passed before it came to me
what he was experiencing.

I demanded bright fire in the sky.
Fierce, deafening bursts
burning rainbows, sparking explosions.
It was simple.

But dad was seeing German 88's.
Flashing powder.
The stench of burnt cordite. 
The shattered bodies of his friends
sliced and diced.
Some screaming 
begging God
for their next heart beat.

Crying for their mothers.
Explosions in the treetops 
jetting metal shards and lethal splinters
into the huddled boys below. 
An effusion of blood
as vivid as the blossoming 
independence day celebration I craved.

Dad and I never discussed it
until four decades passed.
All the heartache poured out 
in the dim light of one particular dusk.
Once more it was just dad and I
accompanied by the haunting of
young friends 
who never returned
whose bodies moldered 
in French, Belgium and German soil.

Fireworks are sometimes distant from
the splash of a summer night.

Sometimes they are the gateway
into the belly of hell
and the furnace of swift death.  

The naivety of youth dissolves
into the warm blood of terror.

His body clung to mine

and together we wept 

for the past and the present

through the burn of the setting sun.