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Chickasaw Plum
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Editor’s
Note re Sherwood Ross’s Poem Hiroshima – Five years ago I met an older Japanese
woman at a Harvard University peace
event. Her name is lost to
recollections, but not her circumstances. She had been a child of 10 in a
Hiroshima suburb when the first atomic bomb was released over Hiroshima. Since that day she has had 137 surgeries in
an attempt to repair the damage done in that instance. She wept almost
continuously as she spoke, a reminder that sometimes the deepest scars are not
visible at all. While it is natural to feel pity for the victims of that early
morning blast, it is equally important to realize that many died and suffered
in Asia and elsewhere due to
World War II, and to work toward avoiding such calamities again.
(The Chickasaw Plum appreciates
Sherwood Ross’s permission to run his poem “Hiroshima” Sherwood writes for newspapers and
magazines. Contact him at sherwoodr1@yahoo.com).
Hiroshima
© By Sherwood Ross
(The following poem is based on the text of John Hersey’s classic.)
I am the Reverend Kiyoshi Tanimoto
A graduate of Emory College, Atlanta
Pastor of the Methodist Church of Hiroshima.
I was in a western suburb when the bomb struck
Like a sheet of sunlight.
Fearing for my wife and family
I ran back into the city
Where I saw hundreds and hundreds fleeing
Every one of them hurt in some way.
The eyebrows of some were burned off
Skin hung from their faces and hands
Some were vomiting as they walked
On some naked bodies the burns had made patterns
Of the shapes of flowers
Transferred from their kimonos to human skin.
Almost all had their heads bowed
Looked straight ahead, were silent
And showed no expression whatever.
Under many houses I heard trapped people screaming
Crying for help but there were none to help
And the fire was coming.
I came to a young woman holding her dead baby
Who pleaded with me to find her husband
So he could see the baby one last time.
There was nothing I could do but humor her.
By accident I ran into my own wife
Both she and our child were alive and well.
For days I carried water and food to the wounded and the
dying.
I apologized to them: “Forgive me,” I said, “for not
sharing your burden.”
I am the Reverend Kiyoshi Tanimoto
Pastor of the Methodist Church of Hiroshima.
I was in a western suburb when the bomb struck
Like a sheet of sunlight.
§
Poet Sarah
Spath has received a BA in English from UC-Berkeley and an MFA
in Creative Writing from Antioch University. She currently
lives in Bloomington, IN, where she is pursuing a
teacher certification program at Indiana University, working for the
scholarly journal Environmental Science & Technology, and finding time to
write poetry whenever she can.
Default
Not to be
but to feel strong
with the power of Buffy
or your seventh-level priest of Helm
to punch down
the broken doors that clutter up
your mind, to drive
the rush of incantation
through a window
through a wall
and time flies
on without you.
Here, they raise
the dead, but these are not
better worlds:
your muscles still,
while the hours grow
short, stiffen in the chair.
§
To Whine or Not To Whine
by
Jimmy Walter
To whine or not to whine: that is the question:
Whether 'tis merely in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of exaggerated misfortune,
Or to take reason against a charade of catastrophes,
And by disputing end them? To see: to awake;
No more; and by awaking to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand imagined shocks
That ego is heir to. 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To see, to awake;
To awake: perchance to soar: aye there's delight;
For in that dawn of insight what heights may come
when we have shuffled off our moral foil,
must give us hope. There's the respect
That makes equanimity for a long life;
For who would care about the whips and scorns of mistresses,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of disprized lust, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the time
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his own mind quiet
With but a fair appraisal? Who wouldn't old farts bear,
And laugh and play even under a weary life,
Since logic slays the dread of anything here or after death,
That undiscovered country from whose bourn
No traveler returns (Hawaii, Tahiti, perhaps Fuji?), frees the will,
And let's us bear rather well those ills we have
Than fly to others that we imagine less?
Thus intellect doth make heroes of us all;
And thus the native hue of disillusion
Is taken o'er by the hale heart of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents surge then fly,
and take the name of action.
§
Cousin Arza
--John R. Guthrie
In wizened mourning like the crow,
she made her way with small
valise in hand from
The Home, breathless, fearful, angry, calling
to Mama from the road, Rosa,
Rosa,
they put a Yankee
woman in charge of us!
There’s a box of salt-stained memories,
Arza’s souvenirs from
preschool days;
the bundled letters he
wrote home,
Daguerreotype, cover stamped with arabesque,
tin case upholstered within
like a coffin;
He’s 28, uniformed in solemn gray, kepi in hand,
cheeks pinked, clear eyes
blued with artful brush,
long hair neatly combed.
Five dollars for this “likeness,”
big money on a private’s
pay! Like every soldier
of every war contrived,
the soldier in the photo speaks;
of sorrow, fear, of loss
and loneliness, pleading,
Please remember me.
After the seismic lead-chunk shock of
minié ball, it now within the
box, splayed like a trout,
nicked by the surgeon’s
forceps,
Mother Rebecca, Arza,
7, and younger brother Ray,
three cows, one sorrel mule,
thirty-three acres in corn,
that family with the honest
pride of calloused hands,
gathered what remained of household
goods
and moved to the foreign
land called Poverty and Ruin.
Mama at the front door now, soup spoon in hand
knows this story well. She
also knows
how great issues conceal a
million bitter tragedies.
how old ways sometimes live
forever
how old wounds sometimes
will not heal
as Arza,
ancient and frail as lace,
leans on her dooryard gate.
The
Chickasaw Plum
- Volume III - Number 8
- August 2006
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