Today I wandered around the hill above Old Town in San Diego and got my photo-du-jour. The Presidio Museum is not at all like the little white wooden Arkansas church in my memory of August 14. The only thing this Southern California building designed by William Templeton Johnson has in common with the little church in Arkansas is that they both have belfries.
UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER
"Come quick,” my Mother called from the kitchen
window open to the summer breeze;
I hurried onto the porch and into the house
because what was in her voice was new and urgent.
“Get Donald and go over to the church
and ring the bell. The war’s over! The war’s over!”
I was ten and couldn’t remember the war starting,
only that my uncles had gone to fight in it.
In our house the radio was blaring with bells ringing
over the hysterical announcer yelling
that Japan had surrendered and surely
peace that would last forever had come.
He said it was A-bombs that did it:
Hiroshima and Nagasaki obliterated
in an instant by a new miracle weapon
that would make war unthinkable.
I asked her how long we should ring
the bell, and I guess she took her cue
from the radio that predicted peace
forever and said, “As long as you can.”
So I ran to my cousin’s house;
and over the jubilation there I told him
what Mother had asked us to do,
and his Mother said yes, yes, do it.
As fast as our bicycles could go
we rode to the church and began
at first together then one at a time
to pull the rope that rang the bell
until there was nothing but the ringing
and Donald and me hanging onto the rope
pulled up and down in the little hall
under the bell tower of the country church.
I remember other things from childhood
but none so clearly as that ringing
and Donald who has now been long dead
hanging onto the rope with me pulling
the bell to announce peace on earth.
I thought then that peace and Donald
and my parents and brothers and sisters
and all good things would last forever.
6 comments:
This poem is wonderful. There's a real zen quality to all of them. You have a style in your endings to manipulate voids or nothingness to capture sincere and honest feelings. Your blog is great Mr Miles!!!
Alexander,
You’ve hit on the reason I like Zen gardens. What is implied but not there is often what makes the garden beautiful.
Jerral
Alexander,
You’ve hit on the reason I like Zen gardens. What is implied but not there is often what makes the garden beautiful.
Jerral
Hello "cousin" Jerral. Actually, it's Margaret who is my cousin. I am enjoying your blogspot. Your writing is not too pretentious and it does have a lot of color to it. Memories of a childhood experience often seem to appear through a mist that clears for a moment and then fades. One doesn't know how fondly those memories become with age until the time is upon one. In my case, my memories are just getting more and more short with age. Dang! I am like a goose, I wake up in a new world everyday.
My mother, your father-in-law's little sister, grew up in Rosboro. She was living elsewhere when the war was over. However, she may remember the church where you rang the bell at the announcement of the end of the war. It may have been one where her grandfather was a preacher. I agree with you that the little church in tiny Rosboro is very different from the one in Old Town San Diego.
Susie
Susie,
The little church in Roseboro was definitely the one you remember. Of course, it's gone now; but I remember it very well...and the school next door... and Maxie's filling station across the road. Now the area has a beautiful new school just down the road from where the old school and church once stood. One of my cousins teaches there.
Jerral
Jerral, loved your poem about WW2 and the moment when the war was over and you and Donald rode your bikes to the country church. And your mother's words saying to pull as long as your could, and you young guys did since you thought that "...peace and Donald and my parents and brothers and sisters and all good things would last forever." Good stuff.
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