~JOHN POPIELASKI~
DETACHMENT
The islanders who
fished the North
Pacific
saw the silent airplane
inch northwest
across the sky, the new
sun glinting
off the fuselage as if to
flash
a warning
to a world that did not
speak its
tongue.
The ocean swelled, played
dumb,
held fish
as it had always done, and
spritzed
the neutral anglers, who
were troubled
by developments that
seemed to have
no end.
Five miles overhead
propellers hummed.
The airplane never
deviated from
its course.
It did not reconsider this
advance
in warfare, did not hear
from anyone
whose time on earth had
come to
this.
It dropped the bomb upon a
city
fresh from sleep and
morning tea.
The light sped toward the
hills.
The mushroom cloud bloomed
upward.
The cockpit of the plane
was bright
with pilots' teeth.
There
was no use
pretending that the trip
back to
the air base
north of sunny Guam felt
grim.
© by John
Popielaski
