First Recall

     by Gary David
		
      ...ashes, ashes, we all fall down.


Grasping a steel clothesline pole 
turned cross, I spin

my two-year-old skull
silly—an experiential ritual

amnesia. Alone a centrifugal
vertigo trips me

up, tricks me into feeling
at home with the mental furniture

50s-style Mondrian 
churned out. A prop in the battleship

gray barracks turned
postwar projects, I skip

the chalked walk under a pale
sun. In the Kodak background

a ’49 Willys –hood up– gets worked 
on as the world turns

nuts and bolts, black
and white, gets down

to business after postwar euphoria
a pair of A-bombs blew up
						
in giddy, unrepentant technicolor—
Barnum & Bailey balloons

radioactively released
on the air. Yet I reel

from the fall into the real
world which makes both 

instant coffee and instant cremation
equally

“do-able.” Simply a matter
of sliderule energy.