Blaring Summer Skies
Take Silence as Mood,
Not Dreams
by Jerry Garcia
We piled into brother Joe’s
’57 Bel Air,
Sea Foam and chrome,
two-toned with white fins.
Vinyl seats, fluffy dice.
A large steering wheel
counterturned to the boulevard
away from our house and its
white calla lily hedge,
its finely edged
lawn.
Green like Easter,
straw swayed
along the roadside
in vacant lots
of abandonment
and undermined growth.
We drove 27.8 miles
to the San Fernando Mission.
Parked among pilgrim cars
pitted by dead gnats of travel.
Quietly entering adobe brick,
mother put a white-lace doily
on her head
sprinkled me with water
from the fount of sinners
and asked God to bless
her gloomy child.
Then she supplicated
on cold stone
at the altar
of Junipero Serra.
Beeswax and shellac
touched my senses
like a sneeze
while the mission bells
tolled redemption.
Through funnels of light
dust motes fell.
A fidgeting boy in short pants
pointed a Michelangelo finger
and I thought he called me
the devil.
When it was time to go in peace,
we left under a roost of pigeons
begging from terracotta tiles.
I saw that boy stumble
and scrape his knee
on jagged mission rock.
Wings fluttered
with a turbulence foreign
to the everyday repentant
in Sunday go-to-meeting clothes.
When I laughed, the boy showed
real tears and a crow cawed disharmony.
That is when I understood
the holy water.
PHOTO: Chapel veil, available at bozidol.com.
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: My mother makes an appearance in this imagined tale of a trip to the San Fernando Mission which we actually made several times. My mom and father were very devout, which influenced my sister to become a Catholic nun and my brothers to try out the seminary. However, it had no such effect on me. This poem can be found in my poetry collection On Summer Solstice Road.
AUTHOR’S PHOTO CAPTION: A happy moment with my mom after my dad cut my hair, circa 1960.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Jerry Garcia is a poet, photographer, and filmmaker from Southern California. His poetry has been seen in Pratik–A Magazine of Contemporary Writing (Nepal), Oikos Poeti per il future (Italy), Spillway 28 (Tebot Bach), Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond (Beyond Baroque), and The Chiron Review, among a variety of journals and anthologies domestic and international. He has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize and has published three books of poetry: Trumpets in the Sky (Moon Tide Press), On Summer Solstice Road (Green Tara Press), and the chapbook Hitchhiking With the Guilty. A retired producer and editor of television commercials, documentaries, and motion picture previews, he now lives in California’s Coachella Valley. Visit him at gratefulnotdead.com.
Silver Birch Press 