Part 17 (1/2)

she often told me, ”a Monarch or something equally as beautiful.”

Eleven days after her death it happens.

I am walking a block from our house when a quick flutter of velvet wings, dark against the pale dome of the sky, pa.s.ses left to right inches from my face, causing me to pull up short in mid-stride.

Turning to the right I see a b.u.t.terfly has landed on the sidewalk at my feet.

Black and brown shadings striated by vermilion bands, speckled with white.

(Not a Monarch but a Red Admiral, I later discover in one of her books.)

”Is that you, sweetheart?” I whisper.

I am a fifty-six-year-old man suddenly kneeling on the cement spilling out his love and regrets to a lone insect he hopes is a reincarnation of his wife.

Clearly as beautiful as any Monarch, an epiphany of color in my flat world, the b.u.t.terfly appears to be listening.Brilliantly hued wings s.h.i.+ft slowly up and down as if they sense the coa.r.s.e human sounds filling the air.

Even once language deserts me, it/she remains a moment by my side (together like partners after a dance!) before soaring into a sky all-at-once blue, vanis.h.i.+ng into her future and my past, alive and free as our finest memories.

JANUARY FIRES.

Joe Haldeman

27 January 1967

precisely one month before I'd leave for Vietnam

the TV went silent

we all looked into the white noise

news bulletin the Apollo One astronauts Grissom Chaffee White have died in a freak fire

(killed by pure oxygen and one spark on a wire's cheap cotton insulation) no pictures please no pictures

years later tempered by combat I saw those grim unheroic pictures ugly and real as napalm death

one almost got the door open

28 January 1986

Daytona Beach tropic morning winter cold rigid splash of icy breakers

freezing seabirds stalk annoyed on cold sand

three launch holds no more patience coffee cold and bitter gritty waiting and grit and cold that's all we talked about talking to keep warm

it finally went up

six jocks and one schoolteacher riding a white column of steam

to a solid spasm of fire

cloud tombstone on the edge of s.p.a.ce

the tourists cheering madly madly thinking it was part of the show booster separation or the rest whatever they call it of us in shock

watching pieces fall into the frigid water

no parachutes no parachutes

two hours later numb the resident expert I sat down in front of a microphone and the pale talkshow woman asked whether I would still go up