October '62, Huntley-Brinkley
reporting the Cuban Missile Crisis--
and they do not mention
later in the broadcast
that some harebrained boys
at a boarding school in the hills
of southern California have run
a cable from a telephone pole
to a eucalyptus trunk, and that
climbing up a ladder, anyone
without the sense God gave him
could grab the handle rigged to a pulley,
and zip down the line for a reckless
5-second ride until he had to jump
to the dirt to avoid smacking flat
into the tree--that, or hold on
for all he's worth as the pulley hit
a knot where the cable's tied off
his body swinging out parallel
to the ground, his arms almost yanked
from their shoulder joints before
he could drop down.
This was a few years
after they did not report a half a million
Ukrainians exterminated by Khrushchev
for Uncle Joe, after they did mention
Khrushchev not being allowed
into Disneyland, replaying the clip
where he's pounding his shoe
on the desk in the UN
Kennedy showed us
the U-2 photos of the ICBMs going up
in Cuba, and we'd seen footage of Fidel,
crazy enough in his beard to fire them off,
saw the Russian supply ships steaming
toward the island, felt the tension
over the air waves as destroyers formed
a blockade. We quit studying
for exams, figuring we'd be blown
to a billion starry bits before we'd
take them anyway.
So, because
the news was bad, because we were out
early on a Friday afternoon, I was there
with the rest of them, knowing better,
but cutting through the air on a wire...
No one grabbed the safety rope
that slowed you down at the end,
and, hitting the knot full force,
hands unable to hold, grabbing briefly
at clouds, everything went dark
as I flipped and landed on my back,
hitting my head just hard enough
to see stars, as we said back then, but
not to crack it like the empty coconut
it was, and pound, perhaps,
some sense in to it.
Parents arrived
to pick us up for a weekend home,
and I was laid out like loose lumber
in the back of the stalion wagon.
In bed for a week, my father too cheap
to take me to a Dr., my muscles eventually
untied their traumatic knots.
I survived but did not make the evening news,
forgotten as the Russian ships that
turned back, the world unpredictably
still in one piece at week's end,
the next crisis in southeast Asia
on the horizon...
My little life
is all I have to tell about, these bits
flashing back in an instant after 50 years
as I wake in the dark, grabbing
at the sky, thudding to the ground,
clouds of dust rising all around me...
dust, which every blind atom
in my blood at 14 ignored as I pushed off
knowing next to nothing, released to the air--
dust which every padre
in the school kept reminding us
was where we were headed.
Electronic edition created by Megan Kipper for New Letters Digital Archive, Culminating Experience, Spring 2021