Rowing Past the Cherry Trees
Purple, color of the sky after sundown, and so the river also,
but a shade darker. Some wind tailing me upriver, then against
me home. I rowed up as far as the top of Peters Island. As
I came around the turning point the Great Blue Heron glided
over me, not more than twenty feet off. I heard his wings pushing
the night air.
Last year at this time there had been much in newspapers
and TV about this 50th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor
by the Japanese. The "big" question was whether or
not Japan was sorry for attacking us without warning. The Japanese,
some say, are wanting the USA to apologize for the atomic bombing
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Commentators went on endlessly on
this issue. With all the death,destruction and suffering that
has been brought about during this, most murderous of centuries,
I think that there should be no scarcity in the economy of
shame and remorse available to us all. We needn't spend much
time demanding apologies of each other.
I can remember well
the morning that I let go the hatred I held against the Japanese
for the war. It was in late April
1963, a Sunday morning. No one else was about. I came around
the Columbia Bridge turn in a single and broke free of " the
bonds of earth". The cherry trees, just past their blossoming
time showered petals onto the river. They were pink and they
covered the river from the East bank to further than the middle.
As I came through them there was only the pink, the narrow
black line of my shell's passing and the swirl of water and
blossom that marked my oars touch of the river. I felt I was
gliding on a dawn sky. All was infinitely quiet, no noise from
me or the boat or the water. As I rowed down this carpet of
petals, there was no wind, yet I knew that there must have
been some small wind, at least, to release all these petals
to the river for just my coming there. I have been waiting
ever since for such a gift to come again.
Two, three hundred
yards and it was over. In that small time, I forgave the Japanese
for what they did to my cousin, Ed Keller,
for having killed the buddy
of my cousin Jack Crossan, and for all the Marines that died on Iwo Jima, Guadalcanal
and Tarawa. Ed Keller's submarine was sunk sneaking in toward the coast of
Japan. He was rescued from the water by the Japanese; three years, almost,
imprisoned- lost a hundred pounds, Aunt Mary grieved his death ("Your
son's ship was lost in action, no more is known") until he walked in the
door one day; nothing but rations of rice, day in day out; beri-beri, malaria.
And so with other cousin , Crossan - foxhole on Okinawa, water chest deep,
his friend up, to get out of the wet, bullet, death, and Jack Crossan's vengeance.
Memory of that soaking foxhole has Jack changing his socks two, three times
a day still. By the time I was old enough to know anything, it had all become
as legend.
Only old enough that Sunday morning to know how righteous
we were, before Kennedy then King went down, before MyLai laid
waste to innocence. Before
the growing
up and down that had me kneeling at friend Joejoe Gallagher's casket asking
a bitter, Why?
On that Sunday morning an earlier, quieter, more peaceful
note. The cherry trees that showered me, that made this carpet
of
dawn, had been donated to
the city of Philadelphia by Emperor Hirohito and the Empire of Japan in
1935. A new variety of flowering cherry had been developed
in Japan. Round the
tidal pools of Washington D.C., and here along the East bank of the Schuylkill
the
Kwanzan Cherry flourishes as at home. Now, many are dead, some remain still,
graceful as old men sometimes are, in twisted weeping trunks. No more a
grove along the river but one here and there, 56 years since
the planting, 28 since
my passing there the morning they gave me their blossoms.
Tonight, passing
those old trees by the rivers bank, above me dark limbs drawn by purple
sky, standing before winter I want to let the river wash
away the sadnesses of
all these years; the Pearl Harbors, the Hiroshimas, the Chosin Resevoir,
Quang
Tri, the video destruction of the people of Baghdad, and the land mine
that took Joejoe. Yet I know were the river to take all that,
it would have to
take the joys as well. Best I can do take in this December night, and
each night
given; note grave cherry trees; for April's blossoms, wait.
