I wonder now only when it will happen,when the young mother will hear the
noise like somebody's pressure cooker
down the block, going off. She'll go out in the yard,
hold her small daughter in her arms,
and there, above the end of the street, in the
air above the line of the trees,
she will see it rising, lifting up
over our horizon, the upper rim of the
gold ball, large as a giant
planet starting to lift up over ours.
She will stand there in the yard holding her daughter,
looking at it rise and glow and blossom and rise,
and the child will open her arms to it,
it will look so beautiful.
-Poem by Sharon Olds
I was reading "The Gold Cell" by Sharon Olds when I came across this poem. It really put a strong visual image into my head. I searched google for some images and photoshop'd them together to make the above photo. This poem really does make you wonder when things will hit home. When I was a child, everytime a plane would fly low over my house I would hear the loud rumble and think, "Is this it?" "Is this the atomic bomb?" Silly as it sounds, with the wandering imagination as a child, it is still very eerie to think of. This fear left me as I got older and realized that these roaring sounds were just low-flying airplanes. However, now that there is a fear that our government is possibly going to drag us into a war with Iran, this fear that I've surpressed has slightly returned. There's no real point to my writing other than to express myself and put my thoughts out there. Anyone who reads this can respond with their feelings or experiences...
1 comment:
Hey Zach, Just linked to your sight from Simon's sight and was reading your thoughts. I was a young child in West Palm Beach Fla. during the US/Cuba missle problem in the early 1960's. Although I don't remember the actual event because I was so young, I grew up in the aftermath of the threat of nuclar war. I remember the drills we had in school, when the horn would blow I would have to get under my desk and cover my head. I was a small boy but with all the drills and the talk I heard, it left me with scares that took a long time to go away. I look back and think, getting under a school desk would not help at all, either the blast would get you or the aftermath would slowly poision you to death. We moved to Indiana in 1969 and only had to worry about tornadows which was a whole new threat that came in the spring of the year.
This year we have had tornadows in the middle of winter, hail when it should have been snow and last week we had a earthquake with many aftershocks. Besides all of the natural threats, to the west of us they store all of the VX Gas, "WMD" and to the east of us is the city of Indianapolas which is a target as well.
Richard
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