Almanac Entry #218

Two days of cloudy skies and sporadic rain, then

 the sun returns, sends a beam across the back yard,

 fires the geraniums squatting next

 to the blistered Charleston bench. Still cool,

 low 60’s at 7 a.m. The early morning dip

 a predictable lull before the dog day begins.

In the garden, asters stretch knee-high, the dogwood

sets spring blooms, petunias and begonias burn

calendar-bright. It is August 6, the day the United States

dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, welding

mankind to fire and fury, to rage and ash.

On my knees, weeding, I am caught in a firestorm.

As a child, I learned to hide beneath my desk,

to shelter if the sirens blew, to spy mushroom clouds

blooming in the sky-blue air. Now, as summer blazes

across the land, beauty erupts in black-eyed Susans.

The scarlet cardinal flashes. Terrible beauty

and beautiful terror, radiant as flame, sear the day.

It is August 6, too late to hide, too hot to pray.