Andrea Carter Brown
Dowry II
October 4. Cannons wake me at dawn.
Every minute for almost an hour, explosions
like those coming from inside the Towers
before they collapsed. It’s hard to escape
that day. Later that night, at a dinner party,
someone tells an amusing story about
airport security the months after 9/11.
Everyone laughed. Me, too. Enough time
had passed by for that. Conversation moved
quickly on, but it took me a while to catch up.
Twelve years ago today I was determined
to visit Dad’s grave on the first anniversary
of his death. Headstone not yet set, earth
bare, muddy from recent rains. At the base,
where his feet would be had he not chosen
to be cremated—more afraid of insects
than fire—sits the plaque showing his
last Army rank and dates of service,
from 1942 to 1946, all unknown to me
while he lived, all gleaned from papers
found in his safety deposit box. Will we
ever again feel safe? October 4th, 2001.
Car still stuck in the garage, tunnel closed,
in a rental car we had to take an unfamiliar
route, giving the site a wide berth, the trip
nothing like I had anticipated. Driving
home was worse, the usual welcoming
skyline missing its paired signature spires.
A funnel of pale smoke rose in their place.
This almost a month later. I felt cheated,
robbed of the last month of that first year
devoted to grief. Furious, too, the ritual
first visit to his grave had been subsumed
in a larger, less personal loss. Ten / four.
Radio operators and pilots still use these
numbers for Understood; I hear you;
Over and out. I have chosen to spend
the twelfth anniversary of Dad’s death
in a remote corner of Southwest France,
a land he loved, although where he had
been or walked, what he might have seen
or heard, he wouldn’t say. The echoing
booms punctuating the gloom are joined
by a hiss, as rain hits the street, and steam
rises like smoke from the warm glittering
glassphalt. He must have heard cannon fire
in that hospital behind the front lines where
he made sure there were enough syringes
and morphine for the wounded, the dying.
Perhaps he too was afraid, hearing cannons
firing after the armistice, until he learned,
as is explained to me this morning, it was
farmers protecting their crops this same way,
shooting at the sky to help clouds fall to earth,
not as destructive hail that will kill the grapes,
but as restful, restorative, healing rain.
O Beautiful
O beautiful for spacious, for amber, for purple
majesties. We carried you in Memorial Day parades,
lowered you as names of the war dead were read,
taps played. In a widow’s living room, folded
into a triangle, you lie in a black velvet lined frame
with the spent shell casings fired in salute by soldiers
in dress uniform beside the open grave. Above
the fruited plain. In protest we burned you, too,
as we did to against the war in Viet Nam, shouting
Hell, No, We Won’t Go! These days, athletes
protest the legacy of slavery by lowering a knee
to the ground when the national anthem, so proudly
we hail’d, is played before games, a polite gesture
by comparison with burning in effigy. Is it not
the essence of patriotism to protest, to want to
right wrong? Let us crown thy good. In solidarity,
as pledge, let us take responsibility. Take a knee.