Poetry Friday--"My Bomb"

I came across a poem in The Extraordinary Tide: New Poetry by American Women [811 EXT], by Beckian Fritz Goldberg, which took me back to my youth and the threat of nuclear holocaust that hung over us during the cold war years with Russia. Perhaps it'll bring back memories for you, too.

My Bomb

Better than a dream, it left gargantuan
roses in the Japanese garden, and the rabbits
heavy as children. we would crouch
in the classroom beneath our desks
and concentrate on being small, study
the whitecaps of our knees. Once

we went below the library,
the dark shelves stacked with cans
of creamed corn, green beans, mandarin oranges
we'd eat like the dead for five years
and rise again. Thus,

I learned the catechism: proton, electron,
neutron. I learned to contemplate
the Invisible. I went to sleep

in the fire-cloud folding like the brain
and dreamt about the power of my bomb,
girls flashing to the sidewalks, cities
filigreed, the bird-cinders,
light bright as the mirror on the shoe of God

and afterward, pink as phoenixes,
the American Beauties pressing
their mammoth lips to the charge of the ski.
This is how I loved the earth

with my life. With the pure nuclei of
my matter. How it fell into my hands.
Better than desire,
my bomb lit the face of my own

twentieth century. I had it
so no one could use it. I would have more
so no one could have enough.

We're not building fallout shelters anymore, but the threat of nuclear disaster is always there. So, for 2012, I pray that the people of our planet will wake up and learn to co-exist without threatening each other with annihilation.

I didn't mean to start the year off on a depressing note! I'm certain there will be many more uplifting poems found at the Poetry Friday Round-Up being hosted at Teaching Authors .

Photo by MaestroBen.