A Walk with Toshio*
Tsunami becomes a household word, along with foreign names:
Saito, a village on the northeastern coast of Japan; Toshio Abe,
an old man who heard the siren, ran, climbed a hill and looked back
to watch the wave rise. Wreckage carpets the news.
Toshio walks along a road, on either side nothing but rubble,
only him and the mid-stripe curving away to the sea,
a narrow blue band, a few distant islands like a view of islands
across the harbor where I live. Where I live, seagulls sail
above rooftops, wings brushed rose in morning sun, around me
the hum of conversation, white porcelain cups and dishes,
and I wonder about who’s tumbled in the wave, who’s left standing
on shore. Days later, radiation crackles at the broken power plant.
Officials chant hymns to safety, but far as Tokyo it bristles
like wildfire. “If we could see it, we’d escape,” a worker says.
And now, radiation snakes into the water, rice straw
for cattle, the milk on kitchen tables rattles. Toshio Abe,
did government, did the experts say not to worry
about accidents? Did they promise jobs, health insurance,
when selling nuclear power? Here, too, they preach
it is safe. One senator says your disaster calls us to keep building
atomic plants. Toshio, are you still looking back?
And those black and silver seabirds, do they still circle above
your lost village? Where I live, mounds of snow along sidewalks
are melting. The sun is warm, dark patches of snowmelt
mottle roads. Soon blue chicory, queen-Anne’s-lace will tremble
as the giant diesels roar past. Toshio, you walk in my dreams.
I’m an old man, too, looking back, sorry about the meltdown
at Fukushima, like Three Mile Island, like Chernobyl, so sorry
all anyone says after counting costs, cancers, lost lives, all we say
in English, in Russian, in Japanese—Sorry! Prostite! Gomen nasai!
Martin Steingesser
PO Box 7575
Portland, Maine 04112-7575
windspooning@yahoo.com
www.MatchBook.org
www.martinsteingesser.com
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*”A Walk with Toshio” first published in The Progressive, April 2012 • Copyright © 2012 Martin Steingesser