There's an ancient ginkgo tree,
vibrant now with verdant leaves,
clinging near a pile of scattered debris,
created in an instant when the sky fell
and earth shattered in a thunderous knell.
From the rubble of this dust heap,
decades after the atrocity
life triumphs as emerald tendrils rise upward,
drinking of a redolent breeze:
the power of green defies death.
Nagasaki: just a city of common size?
Or testament that, despite many failures
the human spirit still soars and flies?
