Death
from Above.
By Ebenezer Baldwin Bowles
Posted on Saturday, August 9, 2014
from rural Washington County, Arkansas
Death from above for the Ancients came from the hand of the Divine. The Lord of Lightning, living above the clouds, hurled thunderbolts upon the grounded forms of man, bringing them down like trunks of the oak and the ash. Gradually, the gods of Olympus faded from the hearts of earth-bound folk. Death from above assumed different forms.
The taloned raptor Pterodactyl and the enormous thunderbird Roc swept down to carry away the hapless herder on the hillocky slopes, the hunter on horseback, the wayfarer drinking at the river's sandy bank, the toiling farmer 'midst his dusty rows. The falcon and the hawk snatched the community's animals from herds and pens. Men watched and learned.
Stones, spears, arrows, shrapnel, and concussive blasts from the warriors and their martial devices — their strong arms, stiff bows, creaking catapults, shouting cannons — rained death upon foe and innocent alike. Now we have the airplanes, helicopters, rockets, and drones to bring swift and awesome death from above. When's the last time you died?
In his dream, the old man witnessed the destruction of two jetliners. The first, a rolling silver tube low in the sky, disappeared behind the treeline, slamming B O O M ! to the tarmac. In the gathering darkness of his portentous and shadowy dusk, he saw the jet dive, saw the billowing fireball. B O O M ! Snared in dreamstate, he heard the blast of the crash, felt a rush of emotional helplessness creep upon him like a thousand pin pricks, and then more explosions, the shoulder-fired rockets blasting the airport, destroying a jet parked on the tarmac, and the return fire, rat-a-tat-tat of machine guns — loud, distinct, remembered sounds of heavy armaments as if he were there, looking through the kitchen window of the domicile instead of under the sheets in his bed, there at the airbase to the west of Da Nang, there to witness the awful dive of the great jet as it plunged behind the tree line and slammed to earth, the yellow and orange fireballs racing heavenward, the black smoke close behind. The sounds! B O O M ! Rattlin' the windows. And bones. As real as real can be without the aftermath, the ringing of the ears and the acid, oily smoke of destruction.
Newsreel I.
Oceana, Struck By Plane
On Florida Beach, Dies.
Ommy Irizarry, an Army sergeant, was walking with his daughter on the beach when the plane crashed. Orizarry, 36, was killed. Nine-year-old Oceana was critically injured. She was airlifted to a hospital in St. Petersburg, about 60 miles north of the beach, where she died of her injuries.
The nearly silent plane glided in from behind Ommy and Oceana, its sound drowned out by crashing waves and blowing wind. The plane's engine had failed. "I never saw them," Karl Kokomoor, 57, the pilot of the Piper Cherokee, said in a statement. "I am deeply, deeply sorry."
"Our precious Oceana has joined her daddy in heaven," the child's family eulogized in a public statement. "Oceana was a beautiful, intelligent, and kind-hearted little girl. She was a natural artist who loved to learn. She was looking forward to the fourth grade."
Rocked In The Arms
Of The Murmuring Sea
"Come to my realms, fair maid, and float with me on the bosom of the swelling sea," sang the bright and gentle goddess Oceana to the sleeping child who bore her name.
In olden times Oceana served humanity as Goddess of the Wave and Protectress of the Wealth of Waters nestled in the bosom of the sea. Sometimes Oceana emerged from her coral-caverned hall to sing a song to her friends Poesie, Primeva, and Justicia.
Know me, fair maids, as guardian of the sea,
The wealth of waters stretching far and free,
Deep basins in the world; in peace and mild,
As bright and beauteous, as a sportive child.
Dancing in sunlight up and down the sand;
Leaping, with white-capped waves....
Gayly, ye billows, among you we play;
Take us up gently, and bear us away;
Light on the surface of ocean we glide;
Deep in her bosom we fearless abide;
Roving at pleasure, joyous and free,
Rocked in the arms of the murmuring sea.
'Bodies Fell From The Sky'
Bodies and other debris rained from the sky all over the tiny village of Rozsypne. "I opened the door and I saw people falling," one 20-year-old said. "A body fell in my vegetable patch." By midday about 181 bodies had been found in the fertile lowlands of eastern Ukraine. "A woman's dead naked body crashed through my roof and landed in the kitchen," Irina Tipunova, a 65-year-old farmer, told Reuters. "There was a howling noise and everything started to rattle. Then things began to fall from the sky into our sunflower field."
Between
Mind and Eye hovers
a barrier,
a thin force —
crinkled film,
morning fog —
blocking
interior concentration
from exterior fruition.
This is the beginning of the end of Mind.
Oceana narrative adapted from 2014 news reports and from "The Tournament of Idylcourt. An Allegory." By George M. Baker in Oliver Optic's Magazine, Vol. XVI. No. 253. August, 1874. pp 623- 630. Lee and Shepard, Boston.
the Weeks family of Winfield Alabama was on their way to church on Sunday when mother Melany spotted two shiny blue helium balloons in their backyard the next day the balloons were still there so she sent her boys out to pick them up a diamond engagement ring and a wedding band were tied to the balloons she took the rings to the police department
Write if you find the time.
ebenezer@crowscottage.com
∞ End Saturday, August 9, 2014. ∞ Begin Saturday, August 2, 2014. ∞
Pray Tell No
By Ebenezer Baldwin Bowles
Posted on Saturday, August 2, 2014
from rural Washington County, Arkansas
Haven't seen a fellow human since Wednesday morning when my true love drove away in the direction of the airport. Seclusion is not necessarily loneliness. The voice on the telephone, purporting to be hers, tells me she is safely arrived for the honeymoon at Niagara Falls. I'm pretty sure it's true. Can't imagine where else she'd be.
I'll go home and pack my clothes
You get your visas 'n' all that
An' away we'll go
Off we're gonna shuffle-uffle-uffle off to Buffalo
To Niagra in a sleeper
No honeymoon that's cheaper
And the train goes slow
Off we're gonna shuffle-uffle-uffle off to Buffalo
Butterfly on the lily, cardinal in the birdbath, loyal hound on the yellow pine of the bedroom floor. You can't ask for more than the truth get it when you can.
Wish I could stay here, unbroken, for another day or two, but word arrives that Hitler has begun a war in Poland and the car payment's due soon. Suppose I'll have to mount the Atomic Road Lizard for a jaunt to the post office and the birds are hungry. Isis needs a new leather collar. Nailed to the leather shall be a brass plate stating R E W A R D with my phone number should Isis become lost pray tell no! That means after the post office I'll motor east to the co-op, buy the collar the sunflower seeds I wish they wouldn't start those wars. I abjure the thought it comes from hell the thought not the abjuration.
The moment she called, the very instant the phone rang, the first rays of the day's sunshine broke free and shone like joy on the sward, the Osage orange and the lime hydrangea. Wish I didn't have to get outta this old rocking chair and go to town. But if not today, then when?
So, if. . . .
[an open-ended culture]
brought about
a Reign of the Narcissists
Then. . . .
we'd have Facebook
and we do.
Every night it's the same thing. Will he come back safe, or won't he? Will we starve to death, or freeze to death, or boil to death, or will we be killed by burglars? I don't know why we go on living. I don't know why we go on living at all. It's easier being dead.
Thornton Wilder,
The Skin of Our Teeth, 1943
Not Golgotha. Could Be.
Steel trusses at a construction site
paid for by the heirs
of William Procter and James Gamble.
Write if you find the time.
ebenezer@crowscottage.com
A Golden Ratio is embedded in this design. Write if you want to know.