Kami

She treads lightly with hands open,

Soft skin brushing soft grass.

Her touch banishing frosty dew;

Her warmth, a spell is cast.

Like a blossom past a winter,

Red rose on bed of snow;

Clad in scarlet and white colors,

She walks with the river flow.

The old azalea sun did rise,

A gentle light setting life free.

Yet one more sun that day was seen,

Amaterasu, blinding to see.

Its warmth too warm, its light too bright;

Outshone, the bloodied sun did flee. 

Surrounded in unnatural fire,

She closes her blinded eyes, hands unfurled.

Color fading from her cloth,

Lips and cheeks graying like a moth

“I am become death, destroyer of worlds.”

Grass in blazes, black from green,

Rivers dry, dew turned to steam,

Kimono burned off soft skin,

A wrath like never before seen.

Now, body charred, color gone, there she lies.

Once a beauty, now less than food for flies.

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Kami= Japanese for deity

Amaterasu= Japanese goddess of the sun

From http://gothicfaerytales.com

Author's note: 

The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has always disturbed me. I took some liberties with the season:: August 1945 was in fact in the midst of summer. I made such a choice to portray the power of life, its touch and beauty manifested in the magical walk of a kimono-clad woman. 

The poem may be a mix of fact and fiction, but I hope that the poem successfully conveys a sense of loss and grief. More than a rail against just nuclear weapons, I wrote it with the intent of reexamining the justifications humans often give at acts of aggression: be it in the name of ending a war, avenging a war, or defending a country. 

Such immense powers of destruction at the hands of reckless man may one day be the deaths of us all.