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His ship had fallen into the sun

And the sun was big and fiery and et away from it

So for a long tih the days and wouldn't go out We had breakfast at , and dinner at the cold diht shows and went to bed at sunrise

And, for a long while, the only days we ever went out to ere the days when it was raining and there was no sun

The Fire Balloons

FIRE exploded over su faces of uncles and aunts Skyrockets fell up in the brown shining eyes of cousins on the porch, and the cold charred sticks thumped down in dry meadows far away

The Very Reverend Father Joseph Daniel Peregrine opened his eyes What a drearandfather's ancient O

hio hoo!

He lay listening to the great hollow of the church, the other cells where other Fathers lay Had they, too, on the eve of the flight of the rocket Crucifix, lain with memories of the Fourth of July? Yes This was like those breathless Independence dahen you waited for the first concussion and rushed out on the dewy sidewalks, your hands full of loud miracles

So here they were, the Episcopal Fathers, in the breathing dawn before they pinwheeled off to Mars, leaving their incense through the velvet cathedral of space

"Should we go at all?" whispered Father Peregrine "Shouldn't we solve our own sins on Earth? Aren't we running from our lives here?"

He arose, his fleshy body, with its rich look of strawberries,heavily

"Or is it sloth?" he wondered "Do I dread the journey?"

He stepped into the needle-spray shower

"But I shall take you to Mars, body" He addressed hi old sins here And on to Mars to findnew sins?" A delightful thought alht of