On opposite sides of a line are long ditches

lined with hope or desperate need…

Foxholes, hiding atheists, for example.

That line, over there, is in the Aragon Forest.

It’s the Battle of the Bulge, Winter, 1944, I think,

at Christmas time,

and one praying soldier is a German SS trooper

and on the other is a 101ST Airborne warrior.

History says both sides sang Silent Night to the other,

while both these gentleman prayed

for the agonized death of the other,

or, just, somehow, to get out, alive, and to go home

and get married to their lovely sweethearts

and have many children and to forget all this…

But all their ammo’s almost gone…

And on this other line…

No!

Over here…

on 44th Street, 2 blocks west of Broadway…

Yes! In Manhattan!

Stands a young aspiring actress who has just received a

CALL BACK!

Finally!

How hard she had prayed for it!!!

After 12 auditions with-out-one….

But across the street is another actress.

Older than the other…

speaking English, praying, with a vaguely German accent.

And she’s thinking maybe it’s her last shot.

She understands the character

but not like any other actress the director has seen, so far…

Except that other, younger, one whose poignant reading

stunned the director who gave her the call-back

after praying a little now I lay me down to choose – prayer…

because he knows

HE HAS TO BRING TO THE STAGE A WINNER THIS WINTER!!!!!

Because since RED VELVET, 2 years ago, Christmas, 2024,

he hasn’t.

And all these orisons remembered,

times a million times a million

arrive in heaven out of order but simultaneously,

as half the traffic lights on the corners

of 44th Street and 8th Avenue

turn green for rivers of praying actors

and shoppers and pick-pockets

going everywhere in their rush-home-with-their-treasures

like the actress with the call-back.

But red for a torrent of others, waiting,

like the actress who has no call-back

but has her hope and her prayer,

running her lines in her head,

stamping her shoes on the cold, concrete curb,

and it starts snowing and the taxi’s are honking,

passing her, splashing slush onto her calf-high-skirt

and a bullet

in a chamber

of a barrel

in the Battle

of the Bulge

has just been fired.

And God is in Her Heaven

lounging on Her throne

but “….all’s not right with the world, Pippa,”

for God’s a flipper

of a coin, gold on one side, silver on the other.

Like a divine Javier Bardem,

just not too old for Her Heaven…

and the old store owner, nearly breathless with relief,

asks, “Just like that?”

and God smiles.

She says, “Yep! Just like that!”

And She returns to watching her angel-chefs

wisking prayers, (as yet unanswered ) mixed with

broken cooko-clocks,

history books

ancient calendars

and dozens of eggs, cracked open

and poured into the whirling mix,

bits of egg shells at the bottom of the bowl,

sluicing down the drain

as some Past blends with some Present,

some Now with some Then

and a never talked “about tomorrow never comes”

as the 101st paratroopers bullet

hits its target

and a taxi wheels squeal

but its breaks don’t work

fast enough

so the young aspiring actress

gets the role

while the older one steps off the curb

2 seconds too soon

when the SS’s bullet misses its target

but not the older actress

who gets to roll-roll-roll down 44th street

near, Oh! so near Broadway!

Where the directors new play that winter,

(The Female Version of
ONE FLEW OVER THE COOKO’S NEST”

is a Smashing Hit!

with “…a new actress in the Jack Nicholson role!!”

who gets to be a star!

With Sigorne Weaver As the Chief.

And Glen Close,

(who in the movie version will

FINALLY!!! get an Oscar

for her acting of Nurse Cratchet)

And the German SS guy

and the American Paratrooper

both get to go home

and each gets married.

Both have baby daughters,

(the American, way after the German

cause the SS guy got busy much sooner,

see there was nothing much to do in a bombed-out-Germany

but get married to some survivor and have babies….

While the American knocked around the USA for a few years

and went to school on the GI Bill to become a lawyer,

then he settled down in his home town and married his

High School Sweetheart…

(Ya See, the Germans town was

destroyed by the Russians and his fraulein was never found….)

so the German got married to a survivor just like he was

and he became a Poppa immediately to repopulate the Father Land….)

But both daughters, one much younger, wanted to be actresses on Broadway

but the younger got to be a star and the older German got to die

in a tragic Manhattan pedestrian accident

and God Finally

got to eat Her omelette for breakfast

and that’s how prayers (sometimes)

are rendered efficacious.

a¹