David Walker Poet Rhyme

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The Color of Lightning

The Color of Lightning
David J Walker
 
After the funeral 
With the solo sung and hung 
in the confines of the chapel
Staining the main
pictographs windows of
Forgotten sins and saints

The flowers were claimed by
blind and lame mourners whose aim
it was to sell them on the once 
busy downtown street corners

Where only the ghosts and mourners of 
well-dressed shoppers and 
shoe-shined businessmen in
the then visible and lively viable 
Small town commercial centers
of American prosperity 
Where they met to eat at the
Drug Store lunch counters

            Just as well
To sell the trappings of a 
perfect Methodist funeral in 
far away heaven or hell

I remember him describing
The color of lightning
Purple and blue, and violate hues
Are common in thunderstorms

But yellow is the color of the
Cooler strikes we know so well
Filtered by the fine dust found on
The Plains

It is where we buried his remains
Wrapped in a Veterans Flag
In that fine dust
Under the cooler strikes of lightning
On the Plains

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Jenna Logan January 11, 2021 at 4:24 AM Good morning, David. Is this a follow-up on the death of your friend, Tom? It's very touching and yet, totally realisitc. David Walker January 12, 2021 at 4:23 AM Thank you, Jenna. Actually, The Color of Lightning is about the death of my father-in-law. He died at 93 last week. He was a well respected local businessman who served in the occupation forces at the end of WWII in Japan. He was trained as a meteorologist in the Air Force. But he was always an Office Manager. He was a very good man.