FRUITVALE SCHOOL - WWII
(for Mom and Tomiko)
contrails of sunlight
streak the war-torn photos
energize all the dust-footed children
summer refugees
larking in a chalk room
paper planes dart like shrapnel
a charge so electric
horseplay normally frowned upon
by Fruitvale's air traffic controller
today is excused
a Navy wife, still awaiting word
from her husband at sea,
she patrols the one-room chaos
settling internees
back among the living
but today's kids seem struck
by a blue drum
crackling like apples
uncontrolled as the atom bomb
triggering peacetime
till the little lost girl at the back
(who never saw Japan)
feels her teacher
hugging her out of exile --
and slowly
raises from barb-wire memory
a hand as
delicate as cranes
