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The Color of Lightning

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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

Copyright © | Year Posted 2021




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Date: 1/11/2021 4:24:00 AM
Good morning, David. Is this a follow-up on the death of your friend, Tom? It's very touching and yet, totally realisitc.
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David Walker
Date: 1/12/2021 4:23:00 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.

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