So strange this land, old and yet young.
Where is this place of tall green trees,
and grey-haired men in unknown tongue?
they must have traveled summer's breeze.
Adobe brick quonset "chalets"
mud-soaked roadways in all the blocks.
WACs and wives and waifs everyday
midst hollyhocks and four o'clocks.
Los Alamos*, this place must be.
A land of Oz 'neath bluest sky.
Where science dealt humanity
a fatal blow, then watched it die.
A perfect paradox is this.
How splendid to contrast the two--
a lovely place/a devil's kiss,
and wisdom sprinkled like the dew.
I left quite soon but still recall
the secrets hidden on each page.
The lilac mountains looming tall,
their perfume of fission and sage.
August 5, 2022
"Terra Incognita"
for This or That, Vol. 13, poetry contest
by Edward Ibeth
*Los Alamos Laboratories, New Mexico, are where the atomic bombs were
created then dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan in WWII.
Categories:
alamos, 12th grade, america, creation,
Form: Rhyme
It is time for another los Alamos
Presently the country is comatose
as the pandemic spread across the land
We need a military plan
The invaders have breached the shore
Citizen hidden behind their door
Coronavirus can decimate the economy
Cutting the life blood a frontal lobotomy
All the best scientist and healthcare officials
Mustered together to devise a protocol
Develop a test and antidote
A vaccine to stop the death tote
A national Emergency must be declare
Its in all of us to do our share
Categories:
alamos, political,
Form: Prose Poetry
In the dominion of two,
orange and yellow songs of birds
chorusing back from their citrus grove.
On the slate terrace
pools of last night´s rain:
by breeze-whim
they give back red blossoms, then
chunks of sky again.
Across the valley cloud shadows darken,
then move on to light up the mountain´s face.
Slam of the kitchen door:
Tae with two glasses of green tea.
All afternoon doing everything
doing nothing.
Alamos, Mexico
Categories:
alamos, life, nature,
Form: Classicism
The Beautiful Changes
Wilbur
Each morning sunlight scrolls down peaks
to the flat valley floor.
Just as each instant light climbing down´s
what wasn´t there before--a rubble of rock
becoming a smooth escarpment--
So each day´s recanting. What yesterday was
a blackened ravine, this morning´s
a green gorge, glintings of a stream far below.
Under sunlight´s realignment a small dent pocked
in shadow becomes a park filled with fern
and their only just-this-day´s latticing of shade, until
Cultivated valley light tracks
the ordered rows of apple trees and plotted wheat,
the coaxed-green march of corn,
where day will resolve itself finite and complete.
Alamos, Mexico
Categories:
alamos, inspirational, life, nature, peace,
Form: Classicism
Under Mt. Alamos
Its monstrous, featureless head looking down
through scarves of swirling mist,
massive vault where what´s packed deep within
are scapulae, claw, fur and femur,
a midden warehouse of the fired clay
of shards, broken pipe and flute,
stratas of ashes, fire-blackened rocks.
Evening and its shadow inch by inch
crosses the bedroom floor
--second shadow over night´s--
and he who lays down his head
begins to take up what´s just
outside the bedroom window:
the mountain´s cache of dream scraps,
stuttering shapes, a host of strangers,
their strangely familiar stories seen.
Alamos, Mexico
Categories:
alamos, life,
Form: Classicism