My second father-in-law

My second father-in-law was a nice guy

but rarely said anything unless the topic

of the grassy knoll or Oswald or anything

remotely connected to the JFK assassination

came up and then “BAM” he went into

a violent frenzy, a bright sky of conspiracy

theories that usually resulted in him walking

out of the room in a huff.  That’s just the way

it was, as Tracy Chapman might sing, what

could you do?

I play solitaire a lot, it’s a redactive game. 

Redact means to get a document ready

for publication, but I always think of pages

with words and sentences blacked out. 

I’ve seen some Freedom of Information

documents so redacted that there might

as well have been no document at all. 

Solitaire is like this.  You don’t edit the game,

you remove whole sentences from king to

ace until there is nothing left to redact, no

conspiracies, no Pulitzer Prizes, nothing.

If I lose the Solitaire gods are against me. 

But even If I do win, there’s not much joy,

just a twinge of accomplishment

which feels like “I was right, all  along,”

but nobody cares now nor did they care then.

FG     6/8/2016

Somehow, my second father-in-law got to work on top secret military projects without being a US citizen.  His whole family was Canadian and when the Avero Arrow, a military Canadian fighter, went bust, George got a job with Avco, an American contractor who made among other things the MX missile.

My wife, who had lived in America almost all her life, was also a Canadian.  After we were married for a couple of years, she decided to become an American.  Besides being drop-dead-beautiful, she also had a BA in English Literature.

I remember the day when she had to appear for her citizenship test.  The man examining her sat under an American Flag had her read a few lines from the Constitution – which my wife performed flawlessly.  Normally, guys would try to chat my wife up, just to keep her before them a little longer.  But this guy – who heard broken English everyday – just looked at her and said, “Could you please read a little more.”

Poetry is memory.