History's Makers, Hanford

Wind sweeps sand across basins,

swirling through tank farms stocked with sludge.

In the upturned earth, history’s markers seep

like tracers through the hard beds

of rock and soil, a faint pulse

that sets the Geiger counter clicking.

Here, secrecy and science forged

against the push of sand

and wind, workers bent to their task,

grit in their mouths, a film of dust gracing

their cheekbones, entering the nose,

the eyelids’ border, the plutonium

yielded for Fat Man’s core.

And there, Bockscar opened its hatches

over Nagasaki, birds in flight

burst into flame, women and children

turned to shadow in stone.

Hear the desert tick, the herons’ ragged course

veering across the river, elements

dispersed through silt,

a burial's feathered trajectory.

-- Nancy Dickeman

literary