The Japans

from Change in the Wind

On the eleventh day of March

two thousand and eleven

the tether is broken, and

a suffering beast

breaks free for an instant,

searching for the open seas

like Brendan’s sleeping whale,

prompted into movement

by a nuclear harpoon

set alight on its back, 

from langorous resting place

this sleeping giant disturbed.

One month later, the cherry

blossom halleluiahs

in riotous praise of life;

an iridescent echoe

of the sprouting ginko trees

disdaining the erasure

of Hiroshima. 

Then, the echo like thunder

rolls to my small back garden

in Dublin, where a cherry tree

splays a choir of gaping pink

that also heralds resurrection.

©Niall OConnor 2013

Daily Mail

Petition:   http://www.change.org/petitions/united-nations-intervene-in-the-fukushima-nuclear-disaster-2