ONE
Winds out of the north at thirty-one miles a hour,
Lucky seven on the
Beaufort scale that will never kiss you goodnight.
The sky always angry and uncooperative, pathetic.
My
weather balloon a hydrocephalic idiot child, struggling
tether lashing in my hands, instrument package of sweetness,
silver box spinning with skull-bashing strength.
Releasing this retard a job for men and scientists.
TWO
"How does it look?”
The
map of the lower forty-eight, a national reality flattened.
"See that tight-ass
isobar gradient?" says Ben, coffee cup in hand.
"Yup,
swing low sweet chariot." and I see it too,
the turgid genital dip of the
jet stream at five-hundred millibars.
Somebody's company picnic is going to get ruined.
"Well," says Ben, "I'm going to go get some more coffee."
He leaves the room.
I am alone with the
map.
Alone.
THREE
Singular red mind of the thermometer,
strapped to a forearm. Main
chute strapped to back,
reserve chute strapped to front.
C-130 going down the strip,
Taking off just like a rocket ship.
Airborne, where no man was meant to go.
Jump up, hook up, shuffle to the door,
jump on out and count to four,
The black
eye wall of a lady hurricane
Reality the last unpierced membrane
Now! electric vision of the future!
The free-fall augury of the nation.
Forests burn, glaciers calve,
Daughters rise to power before a
supercell
squall-line of translucent hail.
Fire your flare gun -
Release your findings, scientist,
Before you
cease to be whole.
FOUR
The brown shirt of a deputy that can benchpress three-hundred pounds
presses forward along a
narrow trail that follows the ridgeline through still trees.
The men stop, they have gone too far. One throws down his hat.
All eyes turn to the meteorologist.
He points up.
"The
cumulus are thickening to
mammatus.
Look at the yellow green of this sky.
The falling air, the curling leaves on the trees, the loud cycling of the frogs.
It will rain within the hour.
The girl is already dead."
FIVE
Why was the atom unleashed?
Who would seek to rend the veil of matter?
To measure the unmeasureable,
to create a man-made mark.
Seven sparking balls of incandescent gas, sized to cites,
each a subcritical plutonium-implosion device
Hiroshima Hiroshima Hiroshima Hiroshima
Hiroshima Hiroshima Hiroshima
40 trillion watts
The energies librated during a summer
thunderstorm
we are at war, gentlemen
we are at war.