Fifth Sun - First Issue

Herewith, the latest selection from dusted-off published poetry and short fiction, circa 1970s vintage and beyond....

Physics

We construct our days
with care under an
oppressive fear
of nuclear fury
searing like a hungry star;
shifting life's strands
on this earth,

We pretend,
absorbed with the
fantasy of living
secure in the belief
that no one would unleash
that hell.

But reality is
a tower of Babel -
an empty wind
bellowing through
diplomatic corridors.

Reality is
grains bending
to the rain of
radioactive death.

Disaffected ones, we
may yet join the ranks
of the third majority.
Truth may yet be
the final equalizer and

Death the impetus
by which to acknowledge
need and reason - imperatives
the fabulists write of
but no one believes in.

c. 1979 Rita Rosenfeld
Published in Fifth Sun - Number 1, 1979