After the reactor-disaster turns

                   turned earth into uninhabitable

Eden, our one sun opens the blue

                   blossoms of oval-leaved pondweed

in tsunami-scoured paddies        

                   where water whelmed the fields,

rinsing them of herbicides—

                   the discontinuance of all but rice—

and so in the radius of a reactor’s

                   afterlife the master of ikebana

of flower-kept-alive arranges

                   the lapis-tinted mizu-aoi blooms

with a fisherman’s boot in a room

                   ruptured by a splintered boat

thrust by that furious wave-tip  

                   up-terrace, while in our unknowing—

how could we know?—

                   the delusive lymph cells begin

reduplicating in you. In years

                   the floods of chemicals released

into your blood will cancel

                   all predictable seasons indefinitely

and I your wife will seek,

                   along the seismic edits of our

coastlines, the flickering blue

                   endangered bloom whose roots

resurrect the tainted earth in

                   smooth leaves, in one-skinned fruits.

—Radha Marcum

Poet’s Website

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