Silhouettes On the Stage 1953
Lying still on the class room floor,
brown paper for a bottom sheet.
All the children were gathered round
and my outline was complete.
A cookie cutter girl was I
in bright black paten leather shoes;
with a gathered skirt, puffy blouse
of blue polka dotty hues.
Drawn silhouette, a paper doll,
not ashen as deaths cold harrow,
and I regret, my parents get
left Hiroshima's shadows.
Eight years gone the Rising Sun
was challenged in an earthy sky;
for bombs Little Boy and Fat Man fell
and two-hundred thousand people died
The Man of Steel, old Stalin
passed away in Russia this year;
the hot cold war was in full bloom
and our children hid in fear.
Beneath our desk tops we scrambled
as the shrill sirens shrieked away
the Committee of Five ruled Russia
and Khrushchev was on his way.
Dwight Ike was in the White House
as a veteran, he'd fought hard
the GI bill was now in affect
and bomb shelters filled our yards.
And little girls with ringlet curls
still made dollies on paper sheets;
while the doll shadows left by WWII
bombs blackened in Japan's streets.
*On August 6, 1945, the United States used a massive, atomic weapon against Hiroshima, Japan. This atomic bomb, the equivalent of 20,000 tons of TNT, flattened the city, killing tens of thousands of civilians. While Japan was still trying to comprehend this devastation three days later, the United States struck again, this time, on Nagasaki. Nagasaki was bombed on August 9, 1945 only three days after the bombing of Hiroshima. And we worry that other countries may develope atomic bombs???
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