Birth

In February I visited the Pima County Air Museum in Tucson, Arizona. One of many splendidly preserved aircraft was a B-29 bomber, Sentimental Journey, like the one in the image below.

The atomic bomb known as Fat Man exploded over Nagasaki on the 9th August 1945 at 11:02 a.m. at an approximate altitude of 1,800 feet. Less than a second after the detonation, the north of the city was destroyed and 35,000 people were killed. It was delivered by the B-29 bomber Bockscar.

Birth

In the cavernous hangar
the silver beast is silent.
Its belly gapes
and I imagine
Fat Man hanging inside,
primed and bloated
with a deadly load.

The belly is opened and
the beast gives birth,
a bastard child falling,
screaming its first breath
with the light of a thousand suns.
Blistering meagre cloud.
Nagasaki opens her arms
and takes it into her soul.

Tim Fellows 2019

Image by guralski from Pixabay