Click on photos below to enlarge to view, then read the heart felt poems from the vigil (directly below photos). Thanks to Nina Egert for the photos and submission of poems.
Hokku no renga (collectively composed poetic conversation, 5/7/5/ +7/7)
1.
Just a flash of light
At the end of the tunnel-
Gone: thousands of souls
Left behind: the unlucky-
Their fate—an ashen desert
Today is the day
To being peace and freedom
Love for all the way
Love like a river
Love like the blue sea
If love is the sea
Then hate is a bleak desert.
Anger dams the heart.
When the heart’s flow is dammed up
Something terrible explodes!
2.
Gentle summer wind—
Heat radiates off the pavement:
Easy to forget.
Gruesome anniversary:
Flash of heat that changed the world.
So many years passed
Still no one is the wiser;
Mushroom clouds still bloom.
Nuclear bombs created,
Danger still for everyone.
Safety precautions—
Violated or ignored—
Can threaten us all.
Talk together face-to-face;
How can you bomb someone known?
Peace begins within.
No one can stand in anger
Flooded by your Peace
In our deepest self we know
That we are here to do good.
Sadness from the heart
Serves as a reminder that
We can do better
Happiness is a virtue
Which depends on the person
Yes, the Bomb exists.
Blossoms don’t quake with fear–
They don’t know better.
But what about us? We do.
Set aside fear; be happy?????
Individual haiku poems:
The Plaza cries out,
“Stop the madness now, dear ones.
All things nuclear must go now!”
Weapons of mass destruction
Must be abolished
If we value life. Jim Woods
Time is running out
Hickory dickory dock
Unless disarmament
Stop atomic clock
Clock goes tick tock tick tock. Stop!
Bombs must no more drop.
We know the answer;
When will we figure it out?
When will it hit home?
Morning in Ashland
On the plaza
Peace cranes fly
Hope above the fears
Together we sit—
Peace cranes spring from working hands
Honoring the past.
Cranes of folded hopes emerge
Peace stretches her wings
Both shadows and sun.
Morning in Ashland:
Cranes of folded hope emerge
In shadow and sun.
Colored paper crane
Beauty in the midst of pain
Lift your wings and fly
In Ashland’s Plaza
A dead tree serve to support
Dozens of peace cranes. Ken Deveney
Two bombs too many.
Two bombs unnecessary—
Let there be no more. Jim Woods
Fire falls through the sky.
Ghosts wander, seeking water.
Death rules the city. Mary Ann Jones
Children burn to death
City blown away by bombing
Never to forget
Nuclear fallout
Scorched earth, melting bodies and
Jellyfish babies
A lonely dog limps
Over the rubble and dust
To sniff a stiff hand Phoebe Knowles
Right now is the time
Remembrance for the now
We decide on peace
So many years passed–
Still no one is the wiser.
Mushroom clouds still bloom.
Mushroom- not to eat!
It will devour you and yours.
Stay away from death.
Sob! Mycology.
So important life force
My joyous pastime.
Now a mushroom made filthy
My country—we are now shamed.
Ever see the rain
Falling on everyone here-
Time to check dosage. Jim Woods
Men split the atom.
What will this power destroy?
People, cities, lives. Mary Ann Jones
Man unleashed power.
Safe storage of toxic waste?
Problem still ignored. Mary Ann Jones
Are you sad to learn
Nevada dessert bomb tests
Radiated EARTH!?
WAR IS HELL
For the vanquished
And victor
I have nothing much
And do the laundry of Life.
No need for weapons.
We are one people
Are here for one another
Stand Strong
Mother is in need
Cancer grows slowly,
Fire grows quickly, yet both are
Enemies of life. Mary Ann Jones
Quiet, sunny morn
Erupts in flames and anguish.
Life’s changed, forever. Mary Ann Jones
Long life for some comes
Mystical experience
Long life for other not.
Disaster descends
Senseless killing young and old
Lotus promise peace
We have hope today
Because people have chosen
Peace and justice now!
When we actually
Love our neighbors as ourselves
There is never room for hate. Jim Woods
May the sound of peace
And prosperity arrive
At your doorstep
Encouraging inner passion
And peacefulness with the heart
Of those living
And who have passed.
Those addicted to
Nuclear weapons must learn
How to change their ways. Jim Woods
Will you see the light?
The New Day is dawning bright.
Awaken and rise.
Out of the dark night
Can come the brightest of light.
Find it in yourself. AD 2014
The terrible war,
Is as dark as night.
The worst is yet here. Silas
Clean up Hanford waste
Hanford waste is a disgrace
No more plutonium waste
If opportunities
Abound, we should always try
To reason wisely Jim Woods
Growing hands and minds
Eager to shape this blue world
In one moment, gone.
Awaken yourself
Higher consciousness does call
Rise above it all.
I must now hear you
Spill your beans on me; please do.
We may reconcile.
Time is great reframe:
Love, joy, peace, and healing comes
To those who forgive.
So many years passed–
Still no one is the wiser.
Mushroom clouds still bloom.
Are you sad to learn
Nevada dessert bomb tests
Radiated EARTH!?
WAR IS HELL
For the vanquished
And victor
I have nothing much
And do the laundry of Life.
No need for weapons.
We are one people
Are here for one another
Stand Strong
Mother is in need
One atomic blast
Makes not the Apocalypse—
But it sure comes close
Ground zero radiates fear—
More potent than a real bomb
Disaster descends
Senseless killing young and old
Lotus promise peace
We have hope today
Because people have chosen
Peace and justice now!
The last of the crew.
Let go of that terror day
And rest in the now.
Duck and cover—Hah!
As if a square oak desk
Could keep out the blast!
Just a little boy
Writing a poem from his heart:
A prayer for no war.
Curious to write,
To read a book about Japan’s
Tulips in the park. Elena Cross
The moon and the sun:
The moon is pretty and big,
The sun keeps you warm.
Ever see the rain
Falling on everyone here-
Time to check dosage. Jim Woods
If opportunities
Abound, we should always try
To reason wisely Jim Woods
Taking care of Mother Earth
Leaves no room
For atomic weaponry. Jim Woods
When we actually
Love our neighbors as ourselves
There is never room for hate. Jim Woods
Burning hot breath
Scorched human heart
Yet, it loves again.
Humans delicate
Chrysanthemums beautiful
Gone in one huge flash
Let all the souls here
Rest in peace—for we shall not
Repeat the evil Junko Morimoto
It won’t be long now
Someday there shall be world peace
Both for man and beast
Look for good in all
To love ye one another.
That’s what Heaven means. Marge
Other types of poems, other topics:
Nuclear Sky
Nuclear sky the heart
My mind is of
Third all
Eye nuclear sky
In between our thoughts
The third
Lies eye
Without
Disguise DL
Pain pain pain
Pain pain pain
Pain ouch pain
Revolution in Jesus rare
The plants grow back
Quickly
What a world of possibilities
When love and respect for all things
Directs the energy of Beings
I like watermelon
The sun is hot
It’s summer
Smashing watermelons
Delicious
Summer
I’m greedy for love
Thus to much junk food is tough love
Refreshing water
Cool as it laps at my legs
While watching the sea sierra smith
Water water flows
Rain and snow falls
Fresh, clean and cool
Please may I have a drink?
Sun filters Through the Crowded sky
Through crowded sky, tears and remorse,
Sad remembrance to be alive
Your planets collide
Can we awaken, breathe again?
FALLEN SOLDIER
He was getting old and paunchy
And his hair was falling fast
And he hung around the post
Telling stories of his past
Although sometimes to his neighbors
His tales became a joke
For all his buddies listening
They knew where-of he spoke
We’ll hear his tales no longer
For, oh, Bob as passed away
If we cannot give him homage
At the ending of his days
Perhaps a simple notice
In the paper that might say:
“Our country is in mourning
for a soldier died today.”
LOST AND FOUND VOICES
Ron Hertz
By the river where the burned came to die
In Hiroshima, near the bare steel dome that looms
Over the waters like an angry skeletal god,
Our Oregon troupe arrive to sing out peace songs…
It was August 6th, somewhat late into sunset
Where earlier in the pastel glow downstream,
Hundreds and hundreds of colored-paper candle-coats
With loving notes aboard, vanished like so many before,
And now, soulfully, we stood, thirty-eight strong.
Led by a woman determined to purge the wrong
That tore her life apart and took her mother from her
The pour soul, then only ten, managed to survive
And new like Moses, she led us with loving care
To friends in Kobe, Kyoto, and finally to this place
Of saddest shame…and here with her only daughter,
She brought us to sing, to contemplate and to understand
And thus, we had come to see what is far easier to avoid
To reflect on what our Smithsonian could not bear to show
Little articles like half-melted tricycles and roller skates
And shadows of the incinerated frozen on walls…
But now by the river we ourselves were frozen,
For the daughter of our leader, who had come
To sing for the grandmother she never knew,
could not bring herself mid-song to utter any more the words
she herself had written and delivered in the other cities,
for this was Hiroshima and today was august sixth,
and the words were stuck like knives in her anguished heart…
behind her we quivered, having no idea what to do,
but quickly her mother without a word stepped forward
and place her tiny, graceful hand on the lower curve
of her daughter’s back, and then in hold miracle like spring
the girl found again her voice, and for her grandmother
(and all the others) she finished the song she had come to sing
