Folded into Wings

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UNODA (UN Office for Disarmament Affairs) is running a Poetry for Peace contest this October. The theme is the "hibakusha" of Hiroshima and Nagasaki...

This poetry contest is a platform to share your thoughts and feelings about the hibakusha testimonies. In their own voices, hibakusha have recorded their testimonies for you and future generations to hear.

I listened to two YouTube testimonies:

Kayano Tsutsui, who was a child in Nagasaki, and
Isano Tanabe, who was a mother with children in Hiroshima.

Their stories are worth hearing. What happened to these people is beyond words - what Nuclear weapons do to people is beyond words.

How do you write such horror into a poem for peace? How do you bring hope out of the ashes of Hell? All I could think of as a ray of hope was another victim of Hiroshima, Sadako Sasaki, who left behind a new Peace symbol for the world - the origami crane. (My Peace Thimble post 80 - "1,000 paper Cranes")

Here's the haiku poem I finally submitted, in her honour:

angels, doves and cranes -
our only hope for peace lies
folded into wings.

glitter-graphics.com

You can see it on the UNODA site at: http://www.un.org/disarmament/special/poetryforpeace/poems/frost/

Finalists will be selected from those with the most "LIKE" clicks. So, if you are on Facebook, please consider giving my poem a LIKE, as long as you really like it! ;-) And do check the other poems out too, there are others worth liking.

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