Glass Blossom

In the grade school garden
where we were innocently waiting
for each new life lust,
and all went single file to Stephen’s house,
whose parents’ snowy television showed us images
of the cloud-swelling fear, the fireball fiend,
the shock that tore the roofs off barracks
like light paper planes blown off a shelf
by an opened door,

Glass blossom of my time,
window of the third grade upper story
bursting inward like some film-slowed flower,
flowering into this room,
blooming in each inch of us
huddled under the desks of even the second floor—
this crystal-sharded blossom
of the third grade window bursting inward,
filling my mind, lacing all these faces
with a glassy wind to burst us at the roots,

I have no comprehension of the authors
of this crime, this mime of death,
this mime of life, this last mime
of my own embryo curling,
with hands and arms covering my eyes and innocence—
only my own child, who has blue eyes,
kneeling on the couch beside me now.
Am I to wipe out, too, this face
with the pain of a glance,
the pain of a midday, white-hot moment,
burning out these all-too-innocent
and unaffected eyes?