Sherry Chandler

Here’s a sample poem from Kelly’s forthcoming book, which will be called Casting Shadows:

Judgment Day

A tired man rests at the foot of his grave
To watch as the stone tracks the dying sun’s rays
And his back is arched and his tongue is dried as he shouts up to the sky

But a fiend in a sin shall exist in his rage
To ponder the pain of the choices he’s made
Now they’ve clipped his wings and blinded his eyes as he comes into the night

Ah the birds of July, he recalls, in the oaks
And the dance of the girls on the flowering slopes
And the words as they leapt up off the yellowing page
Now fading as they die

A feeble man lies at the end of his grave
On the dirt that he plied with a rusting spade
And he jingles his chains in the mists of the night as he prays up to the sky

But a fiend in a sin shall persist in his hate
And his judgment will come on decisions made
Now they’ve broken his wings and blistered his eyes as he welcomes in the night

Ah the birds of July, he recalls, in the oaks
And the dance of the girls on the flowering slopes
And the words as they leapt up off the yellowing page
Now fading as they die

At noon today, according to NOAA, the sun will reach its southernmost point in the northern hemosphere. After today, days will begin to get longer and the light will return. The sun will come back as it always has. And hotter than ever no doubt.

I feel as though our country has been travelling into a great darkness these last seven years, but now as another son has reached his lowest point, I think I begin to see a bit of light creeping in through the crevices.

One of those rays of sunshine was the e-mail I found in my in-box from Kelly Allen Vinal.

If you’ve been reading here a while, you may remember that Kelly and I met when we both read podcasts for Safe Digression. (You can listen to Kelly’s here and mine here.) That was in March of 2005.

In June of 2005, Kelly was in Balad in the infamous Mortaritaville. In July, he sent me the photo that I reproduce again here.

I’ve heard very little of him since then. Somehow I think I heard that he’d come back from Iraq and had been redeployed to Afghanistan but I had no details. So I am very pleased to know not only that he has survived his “latest deployment to Afghanistan” but that he has a new poetry collection forthcoming from LLumina Press.

The Roman poet Horace claimed that he fled from Battle of Phillippi (Cassius against Caesar) shielded from enemy eyes by a cloud raised by Mercury, the famous running messenger of the gods. His friend Pompeius Varus, to whom he addressed his Ode VII, was not so fortunate:

… Thee the reciprocating sea, with his tempestuous waves, bore back again to war. Wherefore render to Jupiter the offering that is due, and deposit your limbs, wearied with a tedious war, under my laurel, and spare not the casks reserved for you. Fill up the polished bowls with care-dispelling Massic: pour out the perfumed ointments from the capacious shells. Who takes care to quickly weave the chaplets of fresh parsely or myrtle? Whom shall the Venus pronounce to be master of the revel? In wild carouse I will become frantic as the Bacchanalians. ‘Tis delightful to me to play the madman, on the reception of my friends.

Like Horace, I will gladly play to fool on this solstice to welcome home my friend “wearied with a tedious war.” May Kelly live to a peaceful, laurel-crowned old age, as did Horace.

And for you, my readers, family, and friends, however you celebrate the solstice, I will raise a generous libation to the hope that the darkness may fade from your lives and the sun come back one more time.