captain B_

The day after Captain B__ and family moved in across the street,

to our neighborhood which was raw with half grown landscaping,

the streets fresh black, young families mostly...

Captain B__walks across the street and rings our doorbell.

He's tan and shirtless, blond crew-cut, a million watts

of white teeth and carrying a pitcher of martini's.

Dad answers the door and Captain B__ sticks out his hand and says:

Hi I'm Cliff, your new neighbor, come over and have a martini.

And bring the house apes, I've got three of my own.

House apes. That's what he called kids.

We were all charmed. On the spot.

Later he took us for rides on his Lambretta scooter

around the vacant field behind the new school.

Hanging on the wall in his family room, a photograph;

a swirling red cloudy mass lit up inside with angry white light.

nicely framed, and hung in a place of honor.

He had been the first man to fire an air to air nuclear missile you see.

And now he rode F-102 Voodoos, at the air base up the road.

he said no more x-rays for me.....ever.

and flashed that big smile.

I heard he made it about sixteen years before the price

the sacrifice, the cancer, caught up with him

and tapped him on the shoulder.

The Air Force is gone. instead: pricey condominiums

and the jet fighter hangers: well lit office space

all those high ceilings and walls of windows:

primo real estate. down at the end of the runways

the landing lights are there, all smashed and dangling wires

wild fennel sprouting through the service roads.

I like those old scars, those wounds that slowly heal,

a reminder of how temporary our pride,

our flag-wrapped territory can really be. If we let it go.

Then the weeds come fast, anise and thistle and iceplant

erasing the geometry.

all those other fortifications gone now too,

because it wasn't just the jet boys, there were missile sites

and gun emplacements, bunkers for world war two,

and rockets for world war three, now it's open space

and sight seeing. watching the hawks

get up the nerve to cross the mouth of the Golden Gate.

Wild places fecund and lush, disorderly,

with a sloppy manicure, this place needs a haircut

so discomfiting to the necrophiliac men

who like to see everything lined up and trimmed,

under control, however illusory that may be.

But that is exactly what appeals to me:

untamed, cavorting, female, breaking walls,

spilling flowers, unbound, twining and climbing

and clinging........rejecting mastery.