Chris Banks
Cold War
Rounding the pathway, I said my prayers
like any twelve year old after confession.
Oak palisades lined each side of the street.
Big trees in full-leaf wearing rusty colours
like insignias of Fall’s surrender. I thought
about the soft cymbals of the falling rain
hitting the sidewalks too. How it dampened
everything I passed – the friendship center,
the candy store, the dirty garage smelling
of oil pans and used tires – and whether
it was that awful rain that turned bones
into a brittle chalk. Would it be possible
for Soviet soldiers to surround my town
like so many Hollywood films prophesied?
How would planes sneak past the radar base
sitting like a giant modern-white Pantheon
on a cliff face above the iron trestle bridge
trains rattled across on their way out west?
TV preached Star Wars and apocalypse-light
to children who, bequeathed a world
they could not yet begin to fully appreciate,
took refuge by drifting inwardly as I did,
scuffing wet clumps of leaves with my shoes
noticing the mark they left, the impression
of bodies vaporized, there on the sidewalks.
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