old news

The stories we remember?
Are the stories we tell.
Not as they happened
Any more than what we see is what is
When I was a boy
Which I don't remember being, not like the photos, not like my parents would tell you
but there I was
and when the Challenger exploded
there was a spark which traveled up
outside the shuttle
inside which were all those hopes
and fears
and those in 7 bodies
And there's a roar of death as I write this. The animal who one day will come
for me
there's no faces on the shuttle
Need Another Seven
but I didn't know them - I knew they should have gone higher
and returend
I knew the stars were less mine
without them
I didn't know what the fires meant
How long they'd burn
how many bodies had burned before
those 7
all the bodies of the earth
I didn't know the bodies who burned in West Philadelphia
but I saw one boy
Was he my age? Older? Younger? He was being held. A news camera saw him
with my eyes
and I see him now
as a boy
for all I know then
I saw him as a brother
friend
other
was his mother with him
who is he now
more radical than I
Or am I
untethered from the dream of
freedom
that played on my old fisher price
Pete Seeger leading a sea of voices
WE SHALL
how did I see those faces then
how do I now
who was with him
and me in my room
as the record spun
As reagan said "I don't remember"
100 times
all these
happened
to me
at one
time