Preserved in the museum at Hiroshima
a wall imprinted with the shadow
of a boy reaching for a dragonfly
the moment before both were vaporized.
In the long history of shadows
this may be the only one that has
outlived by over half a century
the light that cast it.
On the far side of the world
another museum in Los Alamos
houses a full-scale replica of “Little Boy,”
the bomb that made the shadow.
When “Little Boy” went critical, the sun
vanished like a star at daybreak.
A few moments later the sun returned,
and ordinary shadows.
But I am still thinking of the boy,
thrust too quickly
from this world of shadows
into light wondering, perhaps,
why God has punished him
for reaching for a dragonfly
in whose glassine wings he saw
another sun—flash.
Richard Schiffman is an environmental journalist and poet. His collection of poems, What the Dust Doesn't Know, is forthcoming from Salmon Press.
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