As I write this, I'm waiting for our students to return from their weXplore, a five-day excursion that takes students beyond their host city for immersive cultural experiences. For the past two months, we as a school have called Maun, Botswana, our home. It's a small town on the edge of the Okavango Delta and, for many travelers, a doorway into Africa. But Maun is only one perspective, and it...
Read MoreAuthor’s note: A little experimentation with stream of consciousness, and putting everything I have learned throughout the last three months living in Hiroshima into words. I came to this city with naïve opinions and assumptions, and they have been turned on upside down and rightside up again. Did my moral values change? Maybe. Am I still confused? You bet I am. But hey, it’s all a learning curve.
Red
a deformed sky
doused with the sunrise
the warmth lingered on my skin
the cold flame
chilled me to the bone.
I looked out the window
to see a blinding red
coming closer
I wondered
what the divine wind saw
coming closer
cherry blossom farewell
send the sinners home
to mothers
when the white crane
was shot out of the endless blue sky.
We were afraid of red
afraid of the mongrel banner they carried
afraid of the dishonor of fallen Berlin
of eternal winter that will cut us down
like a hysterical, incumbent plague
but we didn’t know
another red
possessor of indescribable beauty
unfathomable destruction
if only we knew.