Verse by Caleb Mannan

If you like Robert Service, Longfellow, Tolkien, Milton, Robinson Jeffers, Whitman, Poe, The Bible, Tennyson, Ray Bradbury, life, death, Untermeyer, Pound, Donne, joy, sorrow, Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, Robert Graves, children, beauty, Dante, Tom Waits, then set yourself down beside this fire.

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Uranium

Though June,
we still see snow in the mountains.
A spirit blanket to cover
the Spokane Tribe
that slowly dies of cancer
contracted from a Cold War gash
never fully sutured
seeping Uranium that poisons
the water, the wildlife, the fish,
the native chokeberries, bitterroot,
and the ceremonial white camas root.

1 comment:

  1. Nothing can kill chokeberries. Believe me, I've tried. Love your poem, though.

    I had a lot of college professors who grew up in Idaho during the cold war that ended up dying of cancer. I always wondered if there was a connection.

    ReplyDelete