Eisenhower in Dreamland

Ike strides down the ramp, stands in a shining circle of secret service.

The Mojave shimmers around them, split open by Operations Plumbob, 

and Hood from Sheahan Mine to Doomtown, where Operation Buster Jangles

roasted Chester hogs alive. The soldiers who collected the fallout with magnets

as they crunched through the perfect, deadly glass beads would die more

slowly, bleeding from the beta burns that appeared all over their bodies.

Now, clean new saucers glide down to settle onto the baked sand,

the pilots step forward to greet the American hero, tunics shining in the

white hot sun, their almond shaped eyes bottomless and blank as opals.

Eisenhower blinks, inhales the dry Nevada air.  The tarmac bubbles beneath his feet

as he considers his welcoming remarks to these strange little men with their thin lips

and long fingers.  He squints.  At the edge of his vision, a lake shimmers into existence,

reflects the open skies and shifting clouds overhead, then disappears.

He absently tongues the molar that began giving him trouble a few hours ago

and tries to imagine what is going through the pale gray minds of the visitors.

He wonders if their history is made the way ours is made: out on the deserted flats

of a strange world, under a distant sun at events that never happened in places that don’t exist.

“The center won’t hold for much longer,“ he thinks, as shadows of indignant

birds reel above him.  He thinks of Shelley and of the stirring sands that even now

fill the tracks of the naked and bestial creatures slumbering through the late morning heat

and knows the desert will guard his secrets as jealously as it keeps its own.