#15 January’s Journey: Father and Son Returns Adding Fraternal Farewell part 1

 

 #15 January’s Journey: Father and Son Returns Adding Fraternal Farewell part 1

Perspective Prelude 

In 2020, when Covid-19 began to leach
Sanity  and courage,
And science failed to reach,
The fearful and discouraged,
Son’s remote learning and online sessions
Led to lassitude and many missed lessons.
Mom and he, and a million others in stampede,
That prophecies propelled at frightful speed
To southern reaches, and open schooling,
Warmer beaches and again more carpooling.
The Age of Enlightenment was left behind, and rationality into the dustbin was consigned,
True seekers of truth preferred any kind of conspiracy that through divination only they could find.
The Founding Fathers succored on the Age of Reason
Would not recognize their heirs’ mad season.
This Father and his heir, and Son
Will now down this country run.
A confluence of withheld reasons
Compels a journey in this wintry season.
The time is now, whilst in Father’s company,
For Son to become prologue to their mutual destiny.
While the Age of Sturm und Drang compels an ending tragic,
Father seeks an epilogue to make their meandering epic.
For now, auf Wiedersehen! 
That is, until they meet again,
And happily, they see, 
That each is in the other’s
Private history.

 

1.         Fraternal Farewell

Older Brother provides a ride to the head of trail.

Whoops! Son says he failed to say one tire has a nail.

Sister stops Dad’s caterwauling, calling to wish the travelers well,

But now there is more work to do before the starting bell.

Sons’ pick-up has waited patiently under a snowy tomb,

So Brother breaks it free from that  frozen womb.

While Son collects his clothes and stacks them in the back

Dad unneeded stands stoically and slack

‘Til coaching Son on how to pack

The bulky blue pick-up.

Suddenly the moment for brotherly goodbyes

The fond fraternal hug, a sad hiccup,

Squeezes a few tears from Father’s faltering eyes.

The little boys’ binkies, bottles and blankets and bloated dirty diapers.

Make way for ice scrapers, glacier blue deicer and working windshield wipers.

Citrus from the sunny places,  protein bars low fat, bagged with bananas in a bunch,

Are now the healthier alternatives replacing the Father’s former student lunch.

 

2.         Perpetual Preparation

 

3.         Duo’s Departure: Son to Sun

The youngest son to his sunny home at last returning,
Along America’s interstates he and father will soon be journeying.
Alert! Winter storm Indigo is bearing down,
Hurry the final prep, they must leave town.
But the interstates are not for them alone,
Other taxpayers will also be hurrying home.
Forsooth! Before they are barely rolling
The queues of cars begin slowing.
Like ice floes choking a river swollen
First responders surround a driver stricken.
Down in mangled steel, reflecting lights yellow white and red,
Freezing the faces of those gawking for the dead.
As if creeping past an open casket, thoughtful glances are exchanged,
At the scene yellow tape, and orange cones, are mournfully arranged.
The surface tension is finally breached,
As the macabre point is reached
Where they gazed.
And four lanes finally lose their unease,
Vaulting to the velocity they please
Those mesmerized are now unfazed.
Son’s proud pick up in procession, defies death with its combustion,
Consumes petrol for growing power,
Climbs from ten to twenty, forty, fifty, sixty then to seventy miles per hour.
Farewell!

 

4.         Indulging in Illinois

5.       “Meet Me in” Missouri

6.         Awed in Arkansas

Father says, “Look, a town called Osceola.” 
Far from the old Seminoles, who used to live in Florida.
Chief Osceola frustrated President Andrew Jackson
That “Ole Hickory” who beat the British and their General Pakenham.
Under Osceola the Seminoles roamed free and loose
Until “the Little Magician” Martin Van Buren duped him with a flag of truce.
If Son’s new state be marred by that sad Indian incident,
Then what state in a moral union is not also tainted and complicit?
Father sits up! “Look at that! Son, go slow!
No geographic accident gave this next town the name Lepanto.”
Arkansans must know their religious history.
They named the town Lepanto after a famous Christian victory,
When the galleys of the Holy League in 1571,
Decisively defeated that naughty navy of the Ottomans.
Thus, setting the Mediterranean free
For more holy commerce and Christianity
That paid for Wars of Reformation in the 17th Century.
And timely reformation Arkansans do not postpone,
“War, Divorce, Wealth – what would Jesus say?” A billboard helpfully intones.
Dad says, “That’s a good question.”  Son ignores the open invitation.
As Father fumbles for an answer to the twelve-foot inquisition,
Son plays familiar music to ease the thorny theological imposition.
Son selects soothing songs from Dad’s own century,
That Father may mediate more sleepily
Upon this rude Arkansan inquiry.

 

7.         Ptolemaic in Memphis, Tennessee?

8.         Muddling and Muttering while Motoring through Mississippi

9.         Alabama “Is Just Alright with Me”

10.       Finally Florida

11.       Terminal Time: Return of the Father