Richard Murray
I have some poems published in The Day After. Art Access and the Utah Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (UCAN) produced the book in reverence and observance of the 70th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Here is one of them:
Pete's Bones
In my child's mind
I gauge the distance from the porch
to the woods,
hear the sound of the shot
splitting the slender aspen
on the hillside.
Grandpa didn't know the cougar's name was Pete,
or that I laid out pans of food behind the outhouse.
At night, Pete's cries broke the stillness
and filled my soul with wild promise,
but it triggered the hunter in Gramps.
He didn't question whether Pete was happy or sad or
whether his eyes were open or closed
when the shot caught him mid-breath.
Today, the earth beneath the outhouse has sunk
as I stand on the rooftop of my story,
singing life back into Pete's bones.
I think something in the air
bends and rises each time I tell it.
Even now, Mary,
my look-alike, my daughter,
is filling up her lap
with all my fierce hope.
