Ground Zero August Ninth

Ground Zero August Ninth

by John Janaro

It was a single bright blazing 
luminous moment,
an instant, a foamy speck of wave 
cresting on the ocean of time.

I did not intend to turn my head, 
but I could not help it.
I thought I saw something; 
my eyes fixed against the edge of the sky.

I looked, and there was a flash on the horizon,
not like the dawn that comes every day, 
mild and sweet and seldom noticed.
No, there was a flash 
like the convergence of ten thousand suns.

As eyes, ears, bodies spun through the air,
the clouds roared and white hot light 
swallowed the earth.

There was no time to dither or complain, 
to flee or to be afraid.
Everything disappeared; everything changed.

Everything, and yet...
there is a strange space of passage, still, 
inside this flashing moment.

For who calculates the division of an instant; 
who can fathom the depth of its duration?

Who knows how to measure the distance 
between the beginning of the end
and the end of the end?
What we know is that the moment has come, 
the time is at hand.

A moment of time burns us away
as fire rages in the wind.

~August 9, 2019