My premonition

In reading about Meema and your childhood memories, I can add witness to your agnostic mother's testimony. I am an atheist, meaning a disbelief in God, but despite my scientific training I have witnessed too much to disbelieve everything. I too have witnessed heavy oak tables rocking violently and laying completely on their side by the mere laying of hands on the surface.

The following is from chapter forty-five:

 

Great blue-black puffs with ruby center

did burst all 'round and fill the sky.

There was no place they did not enter,

soon each was ten; they did so multiply.

 

Before him stretched this cloud so black,

with frightful sound so much like thunder.

'Twas hard to ken this landscape was flak,

with furtive tentacles to drag him under.

 

The shrapnel pelting 'gainst the ship

like ten thousand snare drums dinning,

and twelve chain-saws began to rip,

his turret off to send it spinning.

 

His pulse, his madly pounding heart

and the sweat that commenced to pour,

warned him, - make ready to depart,

before day's done, you'll be no more.

 

One huge burst beneath his turret

from which the messengers did flow,

just the one with his name on it

pierced straight through from below.

 

And as pain did stab his chest,

he grimly bade the world goodby,

but he woke from his fitful rest,

alas he had one more day to try.

 

'twere it a mission he'd now be dead.

He must control his racing heart.

'twas time to clear his muddled head.

He needs to think fore they depart.

 

This was no ordinary dream.

It was a premonition clear.

Now to devise a cogent scheme,

to forestall a real nightmare.

This dream became reality to the last detail, except that the flack which penetrated the seat was stopped by the apron of my flack vest which I sat on for this mission, (MY TENTH). All prior missions I had dropped the apron outside the turret since it could not be worn inside.