Friday, November 22, 2013

I hope to resume blogging in the very near future.  But for now, I'll just break the silence with a poem I wrote of my memories of this day 50 years ago:


Motorcade

When we pulled up to the house
In our new Corvair, 1963
My aunt burst through the door
And ran down the walk screaming
The President has been shot!”
She sobbed
They’ve killed the President.”
My father never liked
To listen to the radio
In the car

I didn’t understand
Five years old
I thought it was a movie
It took me years
To digest that moment
Life magazine
Stars and Stripes
Jackie in black and
John-John saluting

How difficult for my parents
Transferred overseas (Army)
The missile crisis barely over
Now this
When the plane took off
Two days later
It could still have been
"The Russians"
For all anyone knew

The next year
I wanted my parents
To vote for Goldwater
Because I liked the name

Back in America
I had a friend
Who idolized JFK
And Lincoln
Later still
There were bronze busts of JFK
In the art pavilion
At the state fair

But when I think of that day
In my mind’s eye
As we pull to the curb
At my aunt’s house
We're not in the Corvair
We're in the convertible

-- Neil