The Hill

On a bright sunlit morning, washed brilliant with clover, the day was alive with complacency, as color. The day had no reason to quiver off course. A cat in a tree, was stalking a bird, and people were rising, to go off to work. No one was thinking of nuclear things. Below, in the trenches, a watchman has wandered, checking a gage, and turning a page, of an old manual cover. He scratches his head, and ponders a problem, wondering how numbers could be out of order? His heart rate goes up, his blood pressure rises. He is wise to a problem and soon he's alarmed He sets off the buzzers, but knows much too late, the tremor he felt, was not only his own. But instead, is the syndrome, we've always ignored, Something horrendous.........Oh, God, what will come, of the innocent families who live in the zone? People arising, beginning their day who scurry their children, in a rush off to school. and husbands who carry a lunch in their pail, punching a time clock, to work at the mill. Just an ordinary day, in the lives of the men, women, and children who live 'neath the hill. "The Hill", that will bring them the end of the world. Living their lives, on a tightrope so thin, daylight begins, but how will it end? A tremble so mild, invisible wave, has seeped from the waste, with a radiant hand, to swollow landscape, and burn with the sun. As heart rates get higher, blood pressure rises, the tremor we feel, is that of our own. Oh, God, what becomes of the innocent targets who dwell in the zone, men, woman, children......who live 'neath the hill? "The Hill" that will bring them the end of their world. ___________________________________________ The China Syndrome For Contest: "Equations"