Ramapo Lake September 8, 2020

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my father's guns

The distant bangs and thuds and pops

Starting and stopping and starting again

Heard as we hike a trail in the woods

Not the soundscape we seek 

Familiar sounds from my childhood

Hearing rifles and pistols and shotguns firing

Every Sunday all summer for hours on end

When my father took us to the shooting range

It's not a good family time memory

It was an obsession with him

Never to be questioned or discussed

Why we were required to be there 

Guns are for killing and nothing else 

And even though this was target practice

And even though that's all he did

There was a palpable violence about it

He had so many guns kept in the basement

Several cabinets full of collected specimens

But only a few ever got taken out and fired

And only one really mattered to him 

A civil war relic a winner of match competitions 

Using minie balls forged in his special mold

Tamped with patches cut just so from special cloth

Measuring the exact number of grains of black powder

Such precision loading resulted in consistency

And all the practice made for near perfection

With dozens of prize medals displayed high up 

Out of reach of us curious children

So I grew up knowing how to shoot straight 

How to squeeze the trigger while exhaling gently

Holding steady against the explosive recoil

Not flinching even an inch

A skill with a limited application

Unless you are a hunter of wild animals or humans

And I am not such a sniper as that

Though it serves me well shooting photos

But what is this fascination with guns

What about the shock of loud noises is fun

To make someone want to repeat it again

Unless you like to feel you have the power to kill 

Was it because my father lost his father as a boy

Killed by his brother in a hunting accident

Or was it involved with some fantasy of glory

Fighting historic battles in the war to free the slaves

Questions I wonder about as I walk along

Watching the warm September sunlight sparkle

Dancing across the pond on an end-of-summer day

As the first leaves of autumn drift down underfoot

Hanks Pond September 7, 2020

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Clinton Reservoir September 6, 2020

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