440
GERALD ROSEN
commanding an entire company of men spread over the area of a
baseball field, rather than the three bewildered people whom he
alternately pushes (because of the danger) and pulls (because I'm
an officer) to the side of the road and into a ditch.
SCREE-E-E-E....
"All in the area. Take cover!" he shouts at the sky as, just like
in the movies, we leap into the ditch and nestle our faces into the
cool soft dirt.
BOOOMP!
Like mad eagles, swooping, they scream down. Eagles out of
control. In crazed radar-jammed dives down after prey. But con–
tinuing to ac-cel-LER-ATE in never stopping sweeping falls until
all their majestic beauty and force is lost in soft pillow-tossed bursts
of blood and feathers. The world's natural soaring king plops flaming
apart in an anticlimactic
BOOOMP!
That's all. Booomp! But the earth shakes as the fire begins
to wail and the screeching eagles howling down at invisible speeds
become meteors of falling fire and explode against the ground like
burning paper bags filled with water.
SCREE-E-E-E ...... BOOOMP!
Making craters in the earth.
I peek over the edge of the road. I must see. And, apart from
the others, I am given a private arc to hear. To trace the flame
of its fall. To hear it ride the rainbow down. To its end. In the
housing development. In a single home, brick and neat with tended
lawn and, to greet the guests, a brightly painted plaster statue of a
smiling black Uncle Tom in front. Fishing. With a plaster fish
hanging suspended from the wire at the end of his protruding rod.
And as the house flies apart, like a brick balloon burst from
within, I watch the fish on Uncle Tom's line. Swaying gently, help–
lessly, in the hot wind that was once a warm home.
And pieces of the history of the home glide gracefully by. There
goes part of a see-through oven door. And a window frame. And a
single boat. And bricks fly through the air - blocks that were once
the cells of a house. And the severed head of a large toy doll. And
pieces of glass and wood and, no doubt, silk.
While I continue to watch the black angler's fish. Suspended.
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