Wake Up!
POETRY FORMAT, 24 Sep 2018
David Krieger – TRANSCEND Media Service
The alarm is sounding.
Can you hear it?
Can you hear the bells
of Nagasaki
ringing out for peace?
Can you feel the heartbeat
of Hiroshima
pulsing out for life?
The survivors of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki
are growing older.
Their message is clear:
Never again!
Wake up!
Now, before the feathered arrow
is placed into the bow.
Now, before the string
of the bow is pulled taut,
the arrow poised for flight.
Now, before the arrow is let loose,
before it flies across oceans
and continents.
Now, before we are engulfed in flames,
while there is still time, while we still can,
Wake up!
Mushroom cloud from an atomic bomb detonated at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific, 1946.
Image: United States Library of Congress/Wikimedia
______________________________________________________
David Krieger is founder and president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, and a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment. Amongst several of his wide-spanning leadership endeavors in global peacebuilding, he is a founder and a member of the Global Council of Abolition 2000, councilor on the World Future Council, and is the chair of the Executive Committee of the International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility. Dr. Krieger is the author of many books and studies of peace in the Nuclear Age. He has written or edited more than 20 books and hundreds of articles and book chapters. He is a recipient of several awards and honors, including the OMNI Center for Peace, Justice and Ecology Peace Writing Award for Poetry (2010). He has a new collection of poems entitled Wake Up. For more visit the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation website: www.wagingpeace.org.
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 24 Sep 2018.
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