We spin through history

barely scraping the sides with our bitten,

skin wrecked

fingernails, barely clinging on to the future

and never once allowing

ourselves to make more than the simplest

footprint into the course, dusty sand that Time

plays in.

 

Yet I briefly touched Time once

as we all should, and as St. Agnes  stood

motionless

I carefully traced the ripple of the destruction

running down her spine, the tsunami like waves

that Time and the Fat Man with his cigar

hanging out proudly of the corner of his mouth

had ordained,

and in amongst a group of people echoing

the natural call of the mildly interested,

I wept.

 

I wept for the black and white photographs,

the only allusion left to the white searing heat

that melted skin from bone

in Nagasaki

as the statue of St. Agnes looked the other way

and the deaths of thousands who stared up

five hundred feet in the sky

and saw a second sun

born in the resulting flash.

 

I ran my finger through Time and for once

I saw the moment as both predator

and teacher and I lived that moment,

I breathed in the whispered words of St. Agnes

now residing in the marbled hall

of a New York residue

and felt the power of passing sun

run through my skin

as I dried my tears

and prayed for the invisible.

 

Ian D. Hall 2015