to medicine.
Back home, in his
small New York town,
friends got Christmas cards
that year from Silas.
He’d mailed them nine days
before he died.
8:15, December 1941
Frank Cabiness, PFC,
survived. From his station
in the mainmast high above,
he looked down
and saw that half of his ship
was gone.
His hands were burned.
Not like his shipmates’,
charred by flaming oil;
his were friction burns. Grasping
ropes and ladders, he slid down eighty feet
to save himself that morning.
His watch (his children have it still)
stopped at 8:15.
Time doesn’t matter now, to Frank.
At eighty-six, he returned to his ship.
Divers took his ashes down
and placed them in the fourth gun turret,
where he would rest with his shipmates.
A bugler played taps
as they took the urn and dove.
The Fourth Turret
One by one, the divers
have carried their ashes below
and placed them in the fourth turret.
John Anderson—remember him?
The one who lost his identical twin?
John reached the age of ninety-eight.
Many, many years had passed.
Remembering his brother’s fate,
he asked to be with Jake at last.
Child on a Beach
I was a child who played in the sand,
a little shovel in my hand;
I pranced and giggled. I was three.
The ship sailed past. I didn’t see.
I wonder, now that time’s gone by,
about that day: the sea, the sky . . .
the day I frolicked in the foam,
when Honolulu was my home.
I think back to that sunlit day
when I was young, and so were they.
If I had noticed? If I’d known?
Would each of us be less alone?
I’ve traveled many miles since then—
around the world, and back again;
I’ve learned that there will always be
things we miss, that we don’t see
on the horizon. Things beyond.
And yet there is a lasting bond
between us, linking each to each:
Boys on a ship. Child on a beach.
Pearl Harbor
triolet
Time will not age them. They are boys still:
young in that December, and young today.
Though others of us falter, shrink, fall ill,
time will not age them. They are boys still.
We’ll pause, remember, grieve for them, until
memories fade. But though our hair turns gray,
time will not age them. They are boys still:
young in that December, and young today.
PART 2.
Another Horizon
At 8:15 in the morning, on August 6, 1945, an American plane dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima in southern Japan. The city was destroyed. Some eighty thousand people died that day, and thousands more, afflicted with radiation sickness, died in the following weeks, months, and years.
Ultimately, the atomic bomb brought about the end of World War II.
Names
Code-named “Little Boy,” the bomb
was placed aboard. The men were calm.
They flew six hours. The skies were clear.
They’d arm the bomb when they drew near.
The plane was named Enola Gay.
It carried a whole crew that day:
George. Tom. Wyatt. Joe.
Dutch. Jake. Six hours to go.
Two Roberts. Morris. Richard. Deak.
They waited, watching; didn’t speak
until the order came: Deploy.
Time to release Little Boy
At 8:15 they let it fall.
The bomber pilot’s name was Paul.
He’d named the airplane for his mom.
It carried twelve men and the bomb.
Six hours back. No talk, still. None.
Except: My God. What have we done?
Japanese Morning
In a small town called Tabuse
on August sixth, a summer day,
a little boy, Koichi Seii,
felt a shudder in the earth
and saw the sky
change.
From Hiroshima, miles away,
beyond the hills, beside the bay,
on August sixth, a summer day,
Koichi-san perceived the birth
of something
strange.
Is this how it ends? The world? This way?
On August sixth? A summer day?
Morning light? A boy at play?
It could. It might. It may.
The Cloud
They likened it, later,
because of its shape,
to a mushroom.
Think of mushrooms:
fragile,
ascending and unfurling
after a rain,
rising on ragged stems
through damp moss.
Think of this cloud:
savage,
ripping sky and earth
and future,
spawning death
with its spore.
Afterward