Atomic Fallout
The evacuation happened
Too late in the process.
One could argue it wasn’t
An explosion so much as
A slow reactor leak—
That scientists ignored the
Geiger readings until the
Trend was irreversible.
The government removed topsoil
Six inches down, but the
Yams and carrots still grew up
Out of the ground, hot.
The half-life of this radioactivity
Turned out to be longer than expected.
The older one gets, the longer the recovery.
Trauma to the self is compounded
By cumulative exposure to atoms.
The body is resilient, the mind, flexible, but
The heart is a veritable Verdun of strewn
Casualties still waiting to be buried from
Battles that occurred a lifetime ago.
My lion of a father has stopped
Taking his meds.
He fell, and now he can’t drive.
Another Osborn losing his motor skills and
Engaged in a game of chicken with Fate or
Disease, I really can’t say which.
None of the science, the math,
The engineering, the Russian—
None of it will add to a solution
Scratched in pen on a legal pad
Diagramming how the spa will
Get over the 12-foot tall wood fence
To the neighbor’s yard.
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