When it comes.

Since the late eighties, and the "end" of the cold war, it seems we've become accustomed to the idea that nuclear weapons are here to stay. Nukes have faded in to the background, fallen from our line of site in favour of more visible concerns. And yet, they're still there. And now, we're talking about escalating things all over again.

There is something missing that we had only a few decades ago. A sense of urgency. A sense (and only just a sense) of the horrific reality that is constantly so near, and possible. When Randomwalks posted BOMB by Gregory Corso the other day, it made me recall another poem, which my father wrote in 1982. Written when the navy was first bringing nuke-carrying submarines into the Bangor sub-base, it is told with the specific geography of the Puget Sound area in Washington state. Despite, or perhaps because of this specificity, the poem taps into something more universal -- the essential visceral reality of nuclear weapons.

BANGOR

When it comes
it will be quick.
Your old high school sweetheart
will be making tuna sandwiches
for her kids
in a stucco house in Poulsbo

Young Ed from work
will be getting his hair styled
at the mod barber’s in Bremerton,
hating the thought of swing shift,
envying the old men playing pool
across the street.

That strange girl from days past,
you could never figure her out,
but it hurts when your buddies
mocked her strangeness.
She will be scuba diving in Hood Canal,
looking,
just looking.

Your oldest boy
will be reading the P.I. on the ferry,
home for the weekend,
thinking about quitting school again,
troubled by problems
neither of you see.

When it comes
it will be quick.

The heat will peel
your old sweetheart like a grape.
Light blinded
she searches bravely
for her moaning children.

Ed is cut in half
by plate glass,
an infinity of surprise
in the barber’s mirrors.

And that girl
you could never figure out,
that strange girl,
Barbara,
will be carried by a wave
into the tree tops
speared by a burning fir.

Another wave will catch your boy.
The red hot ferry will hiss
as the wave wraps its cold fist around it.

Where will we be
when it comes?
It will be quick.

We are coaxing it home,
wooing it down into the strike zone;
the perfect pitch,
the last out,
inevitable.

Stirring a bad dream with easy lies
we will wake in flames.

TOM JAY

Originally published in The Dalmo'ma Anthology, 1982. (out of print) Reprinted with permission of the author.