Hiroshima, Japan, April 2017: Children’s Peace Monument, This monument for peace commemorates Sadako Sasaki and the children victims of the atomic bombing. Credit: Shutterstock.com.

By Alycia Davis
Cape Cod Branch

July 2020
 

A Thousand Cranes
(for Sadako Sasaki, Hiroshima A-Bomb victim)

It is said a crane might have a thousand years.
She was twelve years old, and thought,
a thousand cranes might save her from the ashes within.

Entombed inside the surrounding white walls,
white ceilings above and white floors below,
where everyone around her wore white,
she sat on a white mattress, covered by a white sheet,
her small neck supported by white pillows.

With her tiny fingers, she folded colored paper into cranes.
Blue, orange, pink, yellow, red, green…five, eight, ten, fourteen,
but the ash kept eating her from within.

Her fingers small and tired, kept folding and folding.
Fifty, a hundred, paper cranes of many hues.
Two hundred, five hundred, her flock grew,
as she shrank, and her body withdrew.

She tried her best to reach one thousand,
but at nine hundred sixty-four, the flock and she stopped.
A thousand cranes might’ve stopped the ashes rot,
But sadly, nine hundred sixty-four could not.