(My brother, aged 29, and his wife and son died in an automobile wreck on Easter Sunday, 1973. His three-year-old daughter didn’t die that day because she was left behind to play with the family who subsequently adopted her. Danny worked as a machinist for Boeing Aerospace Corp, Seattle. This poem is an attempt to explain to him the half century he’s missed since then.)

Fifty years since that Easter Sunday of 1973
the day you and your wife and son died
our father called to slam me with the news
a calamitous head-on collision on the floating bridge
five bodies stripped of breath, spirit evaporated,
all gone before you could move your foot 
from gas pedal to the brake, explosion of metal
at combined velocities of over 100 miles an hour.

Our mother was most devastated by your son’s death
your daughter lived on with the family she was visiting 
political outrage that had muffled the sixties’ dreams
now brought the interminable Vietnam war to an end
Nixon strangled himself with his own paranoia
nuclear annihilation was baked into economic stagnation
I was exhausted by completion of my bad great novel
a pious Southerner was replaced by aw-shucks senility
in the White House on which Nixon had defecated.

I learned carpentry and bought myself a clarinet
realized that capitalism was here to stay
I was in no danger of fame or fortune
and as I passed thirty I saw seventy ahead
remembered our grandfather Solbach 
saying to receive rent is better than paying rent
sweat-equitied my name onto slum property
rehabbed and turned it into a San Francisco home
urban pioneer host of five rooms for rent.

Dad retired from Boeing as early as he could
Mom led him into square dancing and RVs
they moved to Arizona and trucked north summers.
Your daughter grew up a troubled beauty
your buddy who raised her part of the problem
rather than college she trained as a beautician 
at twenty had the first of your five grandchildren.
Our little sister was reborn Christian
married and bore us a niece and three nephews.

Reagan identified government as the problem
which was a good reason to steal from the poor
and give to the rich a la Trickle-down Economics
aka Voodoo Economics heralded personal computers
telephones went cordless heading toward cellular.
HIV tore a path through the progressive world
the Soviet Union imploded, its satellites floated away
we buried our grateful heads in globalization
engaged China to satisfy our widget addiction.

Commercial planes hit skyscrapers and the pentagon
whoopeed us into a war stupid as Vietnam
but longer/more expensive in Iraq and Afghanistan
computers went laptop and cellphones bred smartphones
electric vehicles and green energies emerged
urban sprawl was to be rectified by urban density
but the gorilla in the room was Climate Change
heat domes drowning polar bears breeding beetles
while the world preferred to turn the other cheek.

Dad died in ’04, then Mom in ‘06
the Iraq debacle was just getting vibrant
but it never evoked the rage of Vietnam
just a helpless glare of disapproval
while the beatific visions of a sixties’ elite
became the social everyday of a majority
abortion and pot, sexual madness, uppity undesirables
enraged voiceless conservatives planting legal seeds
while progressives slept convinced they had prevailed.

The money rug was jerked sideways in ‘07
next year a black man won the presidency
but a recalcitrant congress constrained him
eight years produced only Obamacare
token subsidies for EVs and coal reduction while the
Iraq war moseyed along, extreme storms multiplied
just natural variation the voiceless figured,
“One nation under God means cheap gasoline
please Make the fAt and inept Great Again.”

A huckster named Trump heard their lament
tuned his words to fit their sociopathic delusions
“there’s just too much justice too fast
just so much gender and racial equity we can bear
our children are not responsible for history
why learn that Roman slavery was not racist
how our forbearers turned bad into despicable
and built a nation on the backs of Africans
strange fruit is a myth of deep state pagans.”

Our country was born with birth defects
one was slavery and another was the Electoral College
the first entailed a civil war that swallowed almost a million
the second is being used by a dwindling white minority
to suppress a new and waxing majority of minorities
undone in 2000 and 2016 by the Electoral College
swept the master of female crotches and combovers
into the white house with the blessings of the NRA and KKK
civil rights nuts to be neutered by a reborn Christian Nation.

Defeat of the first female presidential candidate
engendered a new hard Left
to match the lunacy of the bomb-and-rifle Right
meanwhile tornadoes and droughts, floods, wildfires
increased as a matter of natural variation, Trump agreed,
“Let’s cut back spending on environmental tomfooleries
open the oil spigots from sea to shining sea
my scientists say that coal is cleaner than solar
a shot of Voodoo Economics will clear the air.”

Covid arrived spring of ’20 to teach us social distancing
in my 78th year I had come to enjoy my own company
but it was more traumatic the younger you were
everything that could be digitalized went online
then it was discovered that masks were a plot
vaccines arrived polluted with CDC worms
the President revealed that bleach was the cure
China was accused of violating the laws of commerce
turns out social media was making kids crazy.

Our little sister got those four kids raised
In spite of a twisted husband/a sordid father
she managed the properties that bankroll my old age.
Your daughter has raised your five grandchildren
reaped the wisdom of marriages and motherhood
she’s as beautiful and much wiser at fifty than twenty.
I never married and buried my genes in music, wood, words,
always wondered how you would have resolved
your love for your wife with your need to escape Boeing.

You would be interested to know that Boeing is still big
you said you’d never fly in the planes you were building
a couple of recent crashes have made Boeing a bad odor
for the moment, anyhow; for the moment all’s normal
the Russians are trying to annex a NATO-backed Ukraine
it’s the biggest war in Europe since the Big One.
In Asia, China not only is commercially irresponsible
she’s built a nasty oversized nuclear-backed navy
that threatens to kick our ass and take Taiwan.

Remember those Malthusian population bombs?
Turns out women given choice have fewer kids
you can’t pay them to do what they don’t want
the problem now is aging populations and depopulation
nuclear proliferation is a bogey we still prefer to ignore
while populism, Christian and otherwise, rejects globalism 
just as tribes fought absorbance into nation states
while carbonized air suffocates the living crust.

We shared birth luck of race, sex, location,
competent parents and historical timing;
luck followed me after you died
I extended adolescent hedonism into old age
shed Christianity and dodged the Vietnam draft 
avoided the traps of marriage, fatherhood, career,
got rich working part time with full-time fun
am blessed with a coherent old age
a chance to complete my dance with words.

The world of your grandchildren is further from you
than our grandfather’s horse-drawn world was from us:
“Opportunity has been sucked out of American soil,”
they say, “Boomers gobbled all the low-hanging fruit
seeded many digital pastures with fool’s gold
sure there’s money in technology and money
eliteniks always reap their generational benefits
but even they sleep with pets for mammalian touch
spending endless pale internet hours gazing at screens 
browsing for love, even warmth.”

How much how fast humans can change 
is a matter of circumstance and inclination
sooner if not later that sixties jolt will be digested
we’ll learn how to handle AI and digital swamps
with time Russia will realize that it’s European,
nations will learn or be taught to share the world
enough time and will could bring heaven to earth
but there is little time and certainly not the will
to stop this slow slide into a planetary Crockpot.

The choice is to despair or to challenge the wind;
maybe suicide is a reasonable alternative?
“Maybe science can save our (make our?) bacon
use sunlight to bury carbon in rock
control the world’s rainfall
breed corn that grows in salt water,
or a bacterium that grazes on raw carbon
microorganisms that shit clean water and oxygen
to guide us through dystopias to clean pastures.”