The Planet Krypton

Outside the window the McGill smelter sent 
a red dust down on the smoking yards of copper, 
on the railroad tracks' frayed ends disappearing 
into the congestion of the afternoon. Ely lay dull 

and scuffed: a miner's boot toe worn away and dim, 
while my mother knelt before the Philco to coax
the detonation from the static. From the Las Vegas 
Tonapah Artillery and Gunnery Range the sound 

of the Atom Bomb came biting like a swarm 
of bees. We sat in the hot Nevada dark, delighted, 
when the switch was tripped and the Bomb hoisted 
up its silky, hooded, glittering, uncoiling length; 

it hissed and spit, it sizzled like a poker in a toddy. 
The Bomb was no mind and all body; it sent a fire 
of static down the spine. In the dark it glowed like the coils 
of an electric stove. It stripped every leaf from every 

branch until a willow by a creek was a bouquet 
of switches, resinous, naked, flexible and fine. 
Bathed in the verdant light of WZZN, Las Vegas, 
my crouched mother looked radioactive, swampy, 

glaucous, like something from the Planet Krypton. 
In the suave and brilliant wattage of the Bomb, we were 
not poor. In the atom's fizz and pop, we heard possibility 
uncorked. Taffeta wraps whispered on davenports. 

A new planet bloomed above us and in its light 
the stumps of cut pine gleamed like dinner plates. 
The world was beginning all over again, fresh and hot, 
and we could have anything we wanted.