After The Day After

   When I was maybe nine

I would lie awake nights

staring fearfully at the deep-navy

dome of starless sky

and I followed the progress

of each plane as it

blinked hauntingly past my windows.

I heard some as a strident snarl, but

some were just twinkling lights

just like stars, really,

except for their inexorable passage

across my view.



And the fear took my hands

and balled them into

nervous fists

and held my eyes so wide

they ached,

even though I knew it was silly,

too silly to disturb my parents with

so late.

Each plane I thought

might hold a strange

and powerful bomb and could

maybe unleash it

on my town

and everything would vanish

in a fascinating orange-radiation-glow



just like on t.v.