from
a collage by Marsha Connell
—for Regina Susskind who did
not leave TMI in time
Above the tilled field a monk dips knowerís ink
into the earth,
serenely addresses the dichotomy of a oil field;
a black chrysanthemum blossoming in his Zen
garden.
Morning enters reverently through wooden slats.
Patterns endlessly repeat themselves.
Red lights—virgin teats—glow on the sleek green
bellies
of nuclear reactors resembling vessels emerging
from raw clay;
the potter breathes air into the pot, raising
the walls.
These, our towers to the strange worship of
divided light.
A vessel adorned with cranes sprouts papery
wings as if to escape.
They say Chernobyl is heating up again;
no one can extinguish the graphite fires.
Used to their government crying wolf,
the old ones have moved back to their villages
at Ground Zeroóthe black egg of the phoenix.
They say: we donít believe. Show us evidence.
The insidious light shines through us; a light
we can't see.
A light for which a child made a thousand paper
cranes.
The cranes, who mate for life, most elegantly
bow and rise,
pirouetting, sweeping their wings; a ballet for
air and earth.
It is evident the monk cultivates the origins
of running grass before he begins to write.
How then, to cipher the inscriptions
of those megaliths pilloring the garden of the
sky?
Summer 1992
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