COLLABORATIVE POETRY 5: DESPAIR

DESPAIR


I know I will not catch myself singing in the rain
with that white-throated sparrow that’s been
at it since daybreak, quite like the broken siren
that has blared seven long blasts at Fukushima.

Spring’s bird warbles in a still dead forest,
the plant’s live warning bellows shrieks of doom.
The blossoms have opened at last, pollens fall
like elfin marbles brightening blackened barks!

Temblor-struck Sendai rushes out of wanton debris,
to cower at the ashloams dumped by burial details
of wind wafted from the station as grand coroner
spraying yet another pollen killing all that is green,

all that still breathes on earth, in air, water, fire,
or lingering spring puddles. The sparrow sings
unceasingly in the rain, but infants have puled
their stifled whimpers where it, too, is spring

at last in brackish swamp lands left by Hokusai’s
wave that has ghoulishly leaped into life
from a forgotten scroll to wash away remnants
of Nagasaki and all remonstrances left of Hiroshima.

—Albert B. Casuga
04-12-11

The Prompt: The red maple blossoms are open at last, puffs of red anthers or orange pollen. A white-throated sparrow sings without stopping in the rain.---Dave Bonta, Morning Porch, 04-12-11 http://morningporch.com/