Snowfall, December 16, 1960*
(*Date of the collision of a DC-8 and Lockheed L-1049 over New York City in what was then the world’s deadliest aviation disaster)
The only time my prayers were ever answered
was for the snow that fell that day,
before the chunks of flesh and metal
fell upon it like an afterthought.
I thought I’d been specific asking God the favor
of a Christmas snow to play in, never thinking
He’d forget the danger to those others
of a snowstorm sent for me.
There must have been at least
a hundred prayers aloft before the crash;
the usual – for clearing skies and safe deliverance –
and even more from those in free fall,
asking the impossible, even of a god.
But only my request was
granted, and in its clueless way
it cancelled out the prayers
of all those others; the desperate prayers
to stall the onset of Eternity.
I blamed myself for God’s mistake,
for his deafness to those
pleas that He suspend the law of
gravity for just that once; that He
somehow make them fly.
I shouldered God’s guilt in exchange for my sins,
in a contract mumbled on my knees
each night until the thought of genuflecting
near my bed seemed too childish to continue
and I learned that only madmen talk out loud
to someone they can’t see.
The guilt I felt was one that only
prepubescent Catholic boys would know,
before unbidden thoughts would fill our
every waking moment and our
sins and pleasures merged into
a single cherished thing; before we ever
dreamt of lives beyond our tree-lined streets.
It was a guilt that haunts the innocent
and blameless, and makes the air
too hard to breathe until confession;
a guilt that kept us on our knees
long after we’d stopped believing.
I’ve prayed at times since then
but only for my loved ones in extremis
when in desperation I become a child again.
My prayers are never answered though.
Perhaps they’re too much like the
ones the doomed had yelled that day
from high above the New York harbor,
begging God for just one thing:
more time on earth for the dying. More time.
.
Abandoned Playground
Like shallow graves, the hollows
scuffed below the swing set
by the dangling limbs
of vanished children slowly
fill with wind blown leaves
and tiny pieces of the world
they knew before
something like a pinecone
falling from a distant tree
dropped into their midst
and stopped the swinging.
© Donald Sellitti
Donald Sellitti honed his writing skills as a scientist/educator at a Federal medical school in Bethesda, MD before turning to poetry following his retirement. Numerous publications in journals with titles such as Cancer Research and Oncology Letters have been followed by publications in journals with titles like The Alchemy Spoon, Better than Starbucks, and Rat’s Ass Review, which nominated him for a Pushcart Prize in 2022.
The Loch Raven Review 