On Going Back

Summertime is travel time. For some travelers the destination is a place previously known personally or an area having to do with family history. Sometimes the two coincide.

What if an elusive early childhood memory persists into adulthood and there is no one who can explain it? A small child saw a large interior with tall windows in a certain style. She sat on a long bench and was entertained by a wooden birdcage held by another seated person. Many years later she saw a television program about Ellis island - and there were those familiar windows! She may go back some day to see for herself her father's and mother's and her name on the immigration lists.

The puzzle of the wooden birdcage persists.

Fantasy for the Fourth

In deep dark dusk
a golden trumpet's piercing note
fractures an invisible rainbow,
flings its colors skyward
in myriad shapes of ephemeral light.

The 1812 Overture explodes,
celebrates in joyous noisy cannonades
our beloved country's birth.

Ghost ships on the Potomac
briefly glow and fade.

Our Festivals of Light

The two festivals of light we celebrate are during the season of Christmas and the Fourth of July, the one featuring more or less stationary lights and the other lights and colors bursting high and overlaid with thunderous noise. Our two prominent holidays are accompanied and associated with music - carols and hymns of peaceful celebration for one and the 1812 Overture in sincere patriotic joy for the other. We are a people who come together on these occasions. On these days we are one: Americans brought together by light and sound, reverence and pride.