farewell to Chief Jack


young men
in blue suits
carry the box
draped in an american flag
which is crisp and neatly made
around its
seriously lacquered exterior

the remains of a man
who spent his life
in dedication
to the safety of others
whose vocation
was to retrieve them
from the cold dark
doorway of death
lies within

he was transported
from the little church
where he searched often
for divine guidance
and strength
to perform his duty
without consideration
for his own safety
or his life

in the highest honor
he rode in the back
of the old red fire engine
where he’d ridden often
as he rushed to perform
the work of rescuers
this time
his last ride
to the emerald green graveyard
was slower, somber and sublime

a priest says a few prayers
for the deliverance of his soul
one-by-one
family members speak
the remembrances of
a selfless man
and in an instant
we are gone

a vacant park-like
field remains
Chief Jack in his box
hovers above
his waiting grave
alone

No Mo NaNoWriMo

Well the December 1st deadline for NaNoWriMo has come and gone, and I have to admit with no shame that I didn't complete a novel of 50,000 words in 30 days. You will note on my NaNoWriMo link to the right, I only completed 20% of the required number of words. This is not an essay about making excuses for not completing, in fact it is with a certain satisfaction that I report here that I failed. Because while I didn't meet the original goal, it was while I was engaged in the flurry of page after page over the first week and a half, that the epiphany of changing my memoir to a fact-based memoir/novel came to me.

NaNoWriMo is intended for writers writing novels, hence the name, but I was using it to help me crank out stories for my memoir. I figured that if there are people out there cranking out a "novel" by typing merely two letters repeatedly until they met the word count goal within the required one-month time frame, I could use it for my non-fiction purposes. Yes, there are apparently people who do that - many people in fact. The rules state that you must type at least two letters of the alphabet in your novel, I guess in order to keep someone from typing merely one letter repeatedly. Not sure what the difference is, but then NaNoWriMo isn't taken seriously by many participants, which to my mind is a good thing. When I began there were more than 172,000 people signed up. I knew I had competition out there, but 172,000???

Anyway, back to my epiphany. Each day I wrote, I found myself thinking I'm cranking out a lot of words, and it feels good from that aspect, but I need to do some good research in order to be true to the stories and their characters. I need to meet the goal!" It was at this point, I realized that the book needed to be a novel, and that I needed to stop and do the research as I go along. Some of you might say "Hey, whip the novel out and do the research later!". But I've encountered something I hadn't fully considered in dealing with these old stories - many of them are from my early career more than 30 years ago. Some are from my childhood - more than fifty years ago. If I don't do the research now, people who can help me with verifying my observations and filling the blanks are leaving this planet. This has already happened to me on a couple of occasions. I can't afford to wait on the research.

But my dear reader, don't despair. I am still writing daily and the direction my book is headed is right where it needs to be. I'm diving in and working hard. Some of the stories come gloriously easy - I sometimes can't write fast enough as they come in a flood. For other stories, I'm a little hazy on the details - hence the need for confirming contacts and other research. And then there is the recall of some of the traumatic memories, which is intense and I find that it sometimes takes me a day or two or three to recover from it emotionally.

The work is good and I'm doing what I was meant to do. As the writer Max Ehrmann said: the universe is unfolding as it should.