February 3rd, 1959

A great crash in the cornfield…
then silence again.
Corn, snow, soil, sky
shifting back to quiet,
like an old man returning to his sofa,
which has absorbed his shape,
after changing the radio channel by hand.

Corn stalks like weather vanes,
pointing in all directions,
to the hysteria of snowflakes
swarming the sky like flies,
the sky itself something dead.

The shivering pale sun arrives on scene
to identify what remains of the young men,
like some grieving mother,
a mother for all four mothers,
as men in cars approach cautiously
from a distance.

Buddy Holly’s glasses are in the snow.
They are unaccustomed to snow.
They remember the arid high plains of Lubbock,
the dust bowl sand storms against
the boy’s window,
the whistling of something never heard before
in neon orbits still in the Western sky,
far from this frozen place.

Chris Pellizzari is a poet from Darien, Illinois. His work has appeared in over thirty literary magazines, including Hobart, Slipstream, and Ligeia. He holds a BA in history from the University of Illinois, a master’s in journalism from Columbia Chicago, writes poetry under various pseudonyms, and is a member of the Society of Midland Authors.