AUGUST NIGHT

It happened so long ago,

And yet it seems like just yesterday

Perhaps because it intrudes so often

A throbbing toothache of a memory

That no amount of emotional dentistry

Can relieve or palliate.

That warm August night, quiet

But for low murmured conversation

Until the gate crashes open

Yelling, screaming, confusion, pain-

But I knew what had happened,

No one needed to tell me,

My world blew up in my hands

And in the back of my head

A thousand points of light gleaming

But not stars in the summer night,

More like glass shards glittering, reflecting

The sad fire of discovery’s explosion.

As the light slowly flickered out

I knew my world had at once ended.

I watched the dying embers-

The joy so diligently laid and ignited,

I had fueled with costly kindling

And now it grew so cold, so quickly.

I knew someone was hurt, in pain.

Many someones. That kind of joy

Is expensive, and I had not been

Aware enough to count the cost

Before I began building skyward,

Even knowing the unavoidable end .

.

Was the joy worth the pain,

Or the discovery worth the destruction?

Would events have, as they all do in time,

Run their course? Or do you feel that,

Like in Viet Nam, that the village

Had to be destroyed in order to save it?

I know this: I feel like an old,

Grizzled desert prospector,

Panning for what scant joy exists

In the poison alkali pools around me.

I find chunks of ore that gleam,

And hoard them greedily, desperately.

Alas, when it becomes time

To take my ore to the assayer,

I find out that what shines is not

What it appears  in my eyes to be

It seldom is so, my joy is not real:

Never was…Fool’s gold. No coincidence.

-Chip Bergeron

  February 17, 2011