Touching poem.

My e-mail has been down all weekend so we could swap out computer parts, 
but. . .

Before 9 this morning, I was in the kitchen taking my blood pressure pill, 
and Mama was in her room (off the kitchen) watching the early TV and 
nursing her stomach (the test always leaves it cranky for a week, for some 
reason), and then as I headed back to bed, we heard a loud sonic boom or 
report.  It sounded like something hit the side of the house.  I said, 
"Dang!  The kids in the neighborhood generally don't toss stuff at the 
house!  We have to get that fence rebuilt ASAP."  I mean, the windowpanes 
rattled.  (We are just north of Dallas.)

Then in a little while, Mama called me on the house phone (she has a cell 
phone by her bed) and told me to get up--that the shuttle had burned up on 
re-entry and broken apart, as they'd feared Apollo 13 would.  We'd always 
known that could happen, and it was just a crapshoot every time that none 
of those tiles zippered off, and the like . . . we were always lucky 
before.  I thought she was misunderstanding, and I said I'd be back to the 
kitchen in a bit, hung up and turned over.  Well, in a bit my aunt called, 
and I had to get up.  She was carrying on about how she'd heard the shuttle 
breaking up while on her morning walk around their neighborhood in Sherman, 
TX, a bit north of here.  Then I got up and took Mama the phone and I 
decided to walk around the house to see if there might be a shuttle piece 
in the yard . . . they have a ton of stuff in Nacogdoches and 
Palestine.  Plus, it has outer space germs on it, and so you can't go near 
it.  Eeek!  A kid who was camping with his family said on the radio that 
they looked up out of the tent after the boom and debris was in all the 
treetops and all through their pasture.  It's just unbelievable.  He 
thought Iraq was bombing us, but his dad said it had to be an airplane 
crash . . . until they turned on the transistor radio and found out what it 
was.

It's taken ALL day for my mother to calm down from the jitters.  "That was 
what I heard--we actually HEARD that OVER OUR HOUSE," she keeps 
saying.  "Those poor people!"  I told her that they hadn't had
time to even 
realize what was happening, probably, on this side of the Great 
Curtain--they didn't know what was happening until they were in the arms of 
the angels.

It's the families (and those young children) who will suffer the most.  Why 
does this affect us so much?  I dunno.  I also dread the start of the war 
and the inevitable deaths and accidents on both sides.  Ah, me.  Why?!

A flying fiery bit of debris went through the roof of an apt house in 
Plano, just north of here--set the attic on fire, and it was so hot that 
the firefighters couldn't get in there to fight the flames from the 
inside.  I think everyone and their pets made it out OK, but the whole 
second floor is charred timbers and rubble.  They expect to find a tile off 
the shuttle in there.  In Burleson, a fellow has a piece of metal and 
possibly a patch off a uniform.  Worst of all (or best of all??  Which is 
it, really. . .. ), in another little town, there's a body in a 
pasture.  Found by a four-year-old and his brother (I think he was eight) 
when they went outside this morning.  Eek.  Nothing confirmed, but if that 
IS remains from an astronaut, well, the family will feel a sense of closure 
in having the remains, but on the other hand, it's gotta be traumatizing 
for your mom to go out and put a white sheet over an astronaut who fell to 
earth in your own pasture, about forty feet from the house.  This from 
radio reports I heard this afternoon.  *sigh*

Too bad "High Flight" had already been spoken for during the other shuttle 
disaster.  I wouldn't mind someone reading it now.
- - - -
Nine out of ten doctors recommend reading my books.  The tenth is a quack.
Shalanna Collins                                          shalanna{at}attbi.com
_Dulcinea: or Wizardry A-Flute_ by Shalanna Collins (e-mail me for excerpt)
ISBN 0-7388-5388-7 trade paperback  http://home.attbi.com/~shalanna/


--- Rachel's Little NET2FIDO Gate v 0.9.9.8 Alpha