Technology is as inevitable as death.
………………………….. —Roshi Bob
Figure Study: Trinity
—Los Alamos National Laboratory, 1945
They taught them to care & not to care.
The trick of battle lines & national sacrifice.
They are building a bomb in what was a boys’ school
where students are only echoes among the yucca.
The fields grow chainlink & checkpoints.
The only music now comes from concertina wire
humming with caught garbage. Little Boy
is sleeping nannied by armed men & dogs.
Surrounded, coaxed by work lamps to grow
fatter, yielding its inner casing to hands rough
with patriotic fervor. To fill with ghosts yet to be,
apprehensive to birth. Men sleep with rifles on boys’ old cots.
It’s midnight in the Mess & three men huddle
over a children’s game. Drop a ball & swipe the jacks.
A game because, for now, they can take it all back.
by C. Samuel Rees
from EchoTheo Review