Richland Dock 1956

Someone launched a boat into the current,

caught and delivered fish to the lab

and someone tested for beta and P-32.

Someone with flasks and test tubes tested

and re-tested to double check the rising values.

And someone drove to the public dock

with a clipboard and tallied species and weight.

Chatting with his neighbors, Which fish

are you keeping? How many do you eat?

And someone with a slide rule in a pool of light

figured and refigured the radionuclide

dose. Too high. Experimented frying up

hot whitefish. No. No. Then someone decided,

all the numbers were wrong. Someone

from our town. Is that why we

were never told? While someone fishing—

that little boy; the teacher on Cedar Street—

caught his limit and never knew.

--Kathleen Flenniken

This poem is included in the collection, Plume,

(University of Washington Press, 2012.)

literary