Four poems by John M. Anderson

Weeks before His Own Death, Oppenheimer Learns of the Fire on Apollo 1
January 27, 1967

Three astronauts in an Apollo capsule die
burning at the top of a laddered gantry that leans silver against the simple
blue of the Florida sky. I'm growing sentimental,

but it seems a medieval
crucifixion master's rendering of the Trinity tower.
The gadget was our cratered goal, our planetarium model we

hung like a clumsy portent from the highest bough.
Wilson said we should fly
a few Japanese witnesses out to see the test-and never

need to use the thing in anger. What if it was a dud? I said.
“Then we could kill them all.”
He was appalled by his own answer. We all were.

Congressman Davy Crockett's Spirit Handles a Closed-Door Session

My friends, it was Nothing. Nothing. Like riding a nag
across the Death

Valley of the evening sky. Like church forever. And after
an Eternity of that

I came across the one bitty pillar of smoke a lonely campfire sends
to God. Just thin

as that. Gemini Christmas, ladies! Man weighed
115 is all. Spindliest

scientist I do believe I ever saw and the whole entire blue
sky a cathedral

bigtop tent depending on him where he stood there,
gentleman smoking.

And this was before he even died! I had not been
among the dead long

when I decided to go see how the end of everything
and all was coming.

It was in good hands is all I can say. Seems he'd squeezed
the universe into a ball

size of a grapefruit of Plutonium and meant it
smaller still. Eyeball.

I did one of those falling star things down through what
the hell'd Oppenheimer

call it? Gloaming? Not that. Daemmerung! Swung to his feet like that.
Woke him up.

Now see I can't recall, my fellow Congressmen, what all—
anything like all—

we said to one another in the conversation that followed his
record high jump.

Conversation protected under hero-demiurge confidentiality.
He swore an oath,

did he. Did Oppie. Swore and swore an oath and smoldered,
mesquite fire alone.

All night right there,
American. And not many of the stars in the night sky can say that.

Toni Oppenheimer Teaches the Ghosts American Sig
Standing in the Sea-Foam, St. John, Low Tide

They're smart. So smart. Two old men in their leather
pants, packing weapons, fingers to their unshaven
jaws. They know where I'm going before I do.

But they're slow. They cannot make their see-through
fingers do what they want them to. Stand there
mute. They know their way around Cajun, know

curses in German, can manage to trade or fight in one or two
American Indian tongues. They're patient as a withdrawing
sea, as night. But the powdering chalk can't write

on the fresh-washed board. Their eloquent, old-fashioned eyes
look, look at my gestures. Gadget, mesa, hold, grapefruit.
They know. They see the moon beginning to rise behind me,

its light stains orange their ungainly pelt hats, their
powderhorns. Scabbard, my hands say, flint. They nod
encouragement. Half-life, megaton. Tinian, Donne.

Nod, a sign. Grin understanding.

Toni's Ghost, Lovely,
as ever, rocks before a beach shack fronting the Crab nebula

My father in the desert stood,

spindle of Los Alamos's
spinning wheel,

the one element still
in that perfect

chaos of purposeful
hurry. The sun

rose and set and the wheel
spun. He was

the needle, north-pointing,
Sleeping Beauty

fulfilling her destiny pricked
her finger on.

And everyone sleeps.
The corporal

at attention in the front gate
snuffles uneasy

and snores. The couples
making hay between

all-night sessions in
minimum specifications

drowse forever in one another's
unstrung arms. Fuchs

and Hall the traitors slept,
smearing their reports

to the Kremlin with infant
slobber. General Groves

slumbered, and only his honor,
always alert, paced

the compound vigilant. It was December
7. It was 1944 for

a hundred years. My father was
the needle's almost

infinitely sharp point-angels danced
at the focus burning

in the high desert air. I don't remember
anything about

our time there. It was all Intimations
Ode to me, “trailing

clouds of glory,” “a sleep and a forgetting.”
I came to

myself later in the shadow of the white-
washed Washington

Monument. I was the reflecting pool, lying
like a shadow

beneath it. Peter walked away, I
could not. I winter

here. I summer in the Horsehead nebula.
It's summer there

a long time, cool as a rose
marble dawn on St. John.

I like it best just before the first blood-
gold insight of something like sunlight.