By Everett Historical: US Marines in battle exercises during atomic bomb testing. Over 2,000 soldiers participated in BEE Shot on March 22, 1955 at Yucca Flat, Nevada. - Illustration
We Are All Jacks, Yucca Flats, 1962
Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds ~ Robert Oppenheimer
The silence of the dry lake bed is broken by the slow
countdown of a megaphone. Flashes of light ignite the
world white to uncomprehending eyes. As the shock
front cools into visibility, an enormous fireball grows
and grows before flaming out like the head of some
leviathan matchstick. A dome of dirt lifts 300-feet high
and stalls. A cloud of twisting smoke climbs above it, surging
upward and outward on the backs of blast waves unleashed in the
pressurized wake. Ear-deafening booms. Goggled men
standing guard in cement bunkers at the seven-mile marker
roll and fall like jacks from a crazy fat kid’s cupped hand.
Rose-breasted grosbeaks perched on Joshua trees stare silently
like towering murals of an imam on mosque walls as an orange
& purple-colored cauliflower head of ash and agglomerates
blooms atop clastic plumes some three miles up – darkening
the meridian sun. Radioactive, recoiled detritus slowly descends on
sunbeams. The dusty face of a new crater falls into place. Cormorants circle,
preying on partially eviscerated squirrels and Kangaroo rats blown astray.
Embracing Sisyphus
At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face.~Albert Camus
In the decay of day
my exhausted feet dodge
vagrant gray rock doves
Hungry rats follow
behind me
lugging pizza
down
the subway stairs
I step back from the platform’s edge
as the 8:05 wheezes to a stop
Fourteen hours later
I’m back in Great Neck
where I started
Walking to my car
I speed up
thinking to outrun
my bosscitytrain schedules emails
quotas bond offerings
I slow to let three women pass
their smiles
gripped and frozen
as they ignore
hoots & whistles
flaggers &
paving crew
standing in the shadows of
mounted glow lights
HOME! – greeted
by an Alexa-enabled
voice, asking
would I like the lights on?
Three whiskies later
I stare at the red-eyed stranger
stubble on his chin
who’s watching
me
in the mirror
A nod & he takes a sip too.
Snapping selfies on Lake Champlain
The bull moose swam across the rough waters
of the lake with the afternoon sun on his back,
submerging now and then to snack on curly-leaf
pondweed floating near the sandy bottom.
His powerful legs made his cumbrous form, humped
shoulders and large head, appear as graceful
as the strokes of an Olympic swimmer. He swam
the better part of two hours before reaching
the shallows. Wading ashore, he paused, shaking
water from his matted fur. Onlookers armed
with cameras swarmed the moose like flies
in search of a meal, forcing him to stumble back.
His breathing labored, he retreated to deeper waters.
Silence filled his lungs and water curled around flared
nostrils as the bull moose began the 12-mile swim back
across Lake Champlain.