Aftermath / Hiroshima

First came rain, thick as night,
blacking fields where cows gleaned 
and roots curled in sterile soil,
pelting sidewalks where
we strolled arm in arm

and we said  Enough

Then grains of death
sifted finely through our pores
and our children brought
their offerings of melted flesh
until we cried 

Enough

We sowed our whitening
hair in clumps and flowers
sprouted, crept 
like fire through sidewalk cracks, 
layered fallen bricks 
in brilliant hues, stilled 
our tongues.

Our  eyes  blossomed 

Oppenheimer

           I am become death and

           the destroyer of worlds.

(Bhagavad Gita)

                       
I was poet, dreamer
unschooled in the science 
of power
until Groves laid
his beefy hand
upon my arm, spoke
(in a voice strangely
quiet for an army man)
about my people.

It was a race against
the “Master Race” but when
their game was up
the prize
was just within my grasp.
Besides even the devil
keeps his bargains.
Could I do less?

Collective Vandalism

Three people were arrested for painting            human ‘shadows’ on the sidewalks in remembrance of Hiroshima.   –news item, August 1986

One hot, august day
in 1945, bank
presidents and mothers
wheeling infants in prams

(the babies too: 
their tentative bodies)
store clerks and
sweepers with brooms suspended,

all the fine, upstanding 
citizens—nuclei of any city,
anywhere, united
for one violent instant

to etch their terrible
shadows
across these civilized stones
and no one was arrested.

August

Red Moon

When Sol invades the streets with Dog Star  
at his side, Luna becomes a pebble flung 		

into the hazy blue. Watch out! for in night’s            
dead calm, when nothing stirs but the sharp-

eared owl, Luna might switch into a megabat 
with one reddish eye and silvery wings spread

wide to obscure the Perseides.  In that moment
she gets tipsy on the nectar of our stolen dreams.