Painting Hiroshima – August 6, 1945

When I was a brush, a crude-tufted, rough brush,
I pulled myself around the sky,
painting mushroom clouds
and streaks of fire. On the ground
I spilled chemicals to burn the skin. 

Today if I were a brush, I would be a fine sable brush
and go to these cities and paint emergency medical stations
with a huge red cross, deep shelters with steps going down. 

But if I could go back to August 5, I would begin
by painting over the Enola Gay with sky-blue paint
and dreamy white cumulous puffs
that looked like sheep or old men with beards. 

I wouldn’t allow one speck of gray-green metal to show,
nothing to build on at a later time. Not one
bomb would leave the soft hairs of my pen,
not one person would run screaming to nowhere. 

But it’s sixty-some years past and the original
painting resides under all the others that tried
to justify or hide the deed—a pentimento
of all those faded pieces painted with ignorance.

–jackiella–