by Robert M. Chute
As I came out of the matinee, squinting
into the afternoon sun, the sidewalks
glittered with silvery chips I hadn't noticed
when I went in —
The Jacksonville evening paper headlined
a new kind of bomb we'd dropped on a city
they called Hiroshima. The Greyhound bus
took all night to cross north Florida
to the air base. With a day's leave left
I hung out in town.
I remember the sea of dark faces parting
to let me join the flow of whites out
into a glittering afternoon, into a world
where everything had changed and yet
nothing had changed.
Robert M. Chute has a book from JustWrite Books, Reading Nature, of poetry based on scientific articles, that is available from Amazon or Barnes and Noble.
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