(with apologies to William Wordsworth)
The world was too much with us—till we dropped
the bomb—then suddenly with sky turned light,
and wind turned flame, with earth turned ash and wrapped
in clouds of poison, with our blood bleached white—
Then suddenly we loved it all:
We missed the roses and the lilies, true—
But even more we missed a lung’s full haul
of air, the marrow cells that kept our tissue
safe. We missed our shields of skin set firm
against the air, we missed the liver’s cache
of blood and bile, missed every egg and sperm,
each membrane, sweat gland, vellus, lash.
That moment, crashing down on waxen wings,
we wondered if we used to live like kings.
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Jessamine Price poet and essayist with an M.Phil. in history from Oxford and an MFA from American University in Washington, DC. She recently received a Pushcart Prize nomination for poetry. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in the Delmarva Review, Sandy River Review and Comstock Review. She has also published essays in a variety of venues including Hunger Mountain and a recent anthology edited by Lee Gutkind (Show Me All Your Scars, InFact Books, 2016). She currently teaches English in South Korea.
