Petrichor
by Eric WeinsteinThe Russians seeded the clouds
over Belarus the morning after
Chernobyl the forest
for thirty kilometers round in a ring
bloomed a terrible red and died for thirty
years or so it’s always been this way
Short memory ours and the Hell
of it is that morning the rain
coming down the way rain comes down
from the naked knowledge of clouds
Did not glow did not heat the backs
of cattle or factory men minor monsters
who walk the earth but like the nuclear
shadows at Hiroshima hissed into the dirt
burnt whole histories there and smelled
exactly exactly exactly exactly the same
Eric Weinstein's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, The Believer, Crazyhorse, The New Yorker, Ploughshares, The Yale Review and others. He lives in New York City.
