Niagara of memory viii. Canada Never

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i.
when I was a child
Nike missiles pointed at the sky
when ever we were afraid

When Khrushchev
hammered his shoe
the missiles lifted

When Cuba
began to build
Russian missiles
our missiles lifted

When a submarine
came too close
our missiles lifted

When an airplane
strayed afar
our missiles lifted

When the Russian Navy
put to sea
our missiles lifted

When the Soviet
Army marched
our missiles lifted.

When in Washington
our men
were frightened
our missiles lifted

Did the missiles
save us?
As a child
I did not know

In my naïve
way I did know
that we did
duck and cover
when
our missiles lifted

ii.
Nearby the  missiles were great balls of ice cream, each one perhaps 10 or 20 yards across. We were told that these great domes protected the sky. Now of course I understand that these great white balls sheltered sweeping radar antennae.

We were told that the Nike missiles would rush into the sky to take down any Russians before they could reach us with their atom bombs  (That's what we called them then -- atomic bombs).  What they did not tell us was that these missiles would shoot up from Niagara Falls where we lived over to Canada where they would explode with their own  nuclear fury, bringing down not one, but a wave of Russian bombers.

I wonder what the Canadians thought of this idea-  that American atomic bombs would detonate over their lands and people.  Perhaps they did not know that the America's nuclear shield rested on their heads.

iii.
I think  clean
Canada
a lake
only
the faintest
tobacco
stain

swimming
in plain
sight
of  the bottom
and sky

hard rock
Islands
between the grass
and poor scrub
pine

sky
blue to black
and the thousand thousand
stars
fireflies
no difference

iv.
In 1961 when the Power Project was completed, Niagara Falls  became the largest hydropower producer in the Western world. Waters diverted from the Niagara River fed great generators that supplied electricity to homes and industry as far as New York City, 250 miles to the south. Survivability was the buzzword of American defense plans in the 1950s and 60s. War hawks like Gen. Curtis LeMay believed that a small nuclear conflict could be survived, leading to an American victory. More than 310 Nike missile sites dotted the United States, protecting vital resources and populations. Each site held three or four underground bunkers feeding missile after missile to launching rails above.  It is not known how many of these sites were nuclear capable. Given the otherwise miserable ineffectiveness of the Nike system, it seems likely that most of the missiles were nuclear tipped.
Canada's largest city, Toronto,  is due north of Niagara Falls, at just the optimum range for a Nike missile

v.
bright
I think scoured
Canada
a lake
steaming
black
and gray

rock
and ash
here and there
white with heat
Ash

Toronto
still
no cries
just ash
Ash
still

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