So Much Is Lost--By Kelley White--United States

So Much Is Lost

Last week you took away my father’s photographs

of Nagasaki, the coins he brought home from Japan

in 1947, the paper money, improbably printed

in English, labeled by the bank of Imperial Japan,

that I taped together to make a garland

in 1967, when I believed in a world of peace,

before 1968, assassinations, and a war for my own

generation in a far off place. My son, expert

on the history of Atari, of Namco, of Bally Midway,

Pac-Man, Nintendo, Intellivision, Playstation, Sony,

of arcade arts, of shooting games. You will be living

there, in the country that boy touched. Want me

to come see you in an odd-numbered month

so we can see Sumo? Will you show me Kyoto?

And Hiroshima? Cherry blossoms, and the museum

of the bomb. Here, we’ve found a match—a temple

in a black and white photo, in your grandfather’s journal,

brilliantly painted, crisply in focus, on your phone.

Pediatrician Kelley White worked in inner city Philadelphia and now works in rural New Hampshire. Her poems have appeared in journals including Exquisite Corpse, Rattle and JAMA. Her most recent books are Toxic Environment (Boston Poet Press) and Two Birds in Flame (Beech River Books.) She received a 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant.