Portside

Hiroshima Redux

By Jeffrey Thomas Leong

“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
   R. Oppenheimer, 1965

To have filmed it, would have been to anticipate
its sheer awesome power,

prayed to rest and tested upon the skin of
forgotten children.

To capture, would have been to throw it onto
ground zero, yet then…

at low elevation, perhaps sea level, he sat zazen in
a rock garden canopied

by leafy Japanese maples in early August,
and observed

curvatures of sand and stone swirl like tidal
currents about

an island of small granite placed off center. 
A bit further…

he might have walked through a gate as yet crimson,
emblazoned with

four Kanji characters which declare peace comes
to all who

practice mindfulness, but then swept by heat,
the temple burst

into flame, one no human or no god
could ever reframe.

Jeffrey Thomas Leong is a poet and writer, born in Southern California and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area.  For over two decades, he worked as a public health administrator and attorney for the City of San Francisco.  He recently earned his MFA in Writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts, and while there, began a project to translate the Chinese wall poems at the Angel Island Immigration Station. His poetry and prose have appeared in many publications including Crab Orchard, Cimarron Review, Bamboo Ridge, Hyphen, Cha, and Spillway. He lives with his wife and daughter in the East Bay city of San Leandro. See also
http://writinglikeanasian.blogspot.com/2016/06/feature-five-qs-with-jef…