TUESDAY: Toxic Materials

BY MIKE KEENAN

Copyright is held by the author.

I signed up to protect our town,
to learn what seeps
unseen into soil and water,
barrels half-forgotten in fenced-off lots,
rusting under the glaring sun.

The train carried me east to Ottawa,
a highway bus waiting — just for me.
An alderman from a small town,
riding alone, twenty empty rows,
federal dollars burning with every turn.

In a conference centre —
a repurposed airport,
concrete echoing with old jet fumes —
I shook hands with mayors from towns
stitched across a map like loose buttons.

Yukon, Labrador,
The Northwest Territories,
prairie grain towns
where danger felt
as distant as the tide.

Then the map painted on the floor,
the size of a hockey rink,
quiet symbols marking targets —
nuclear crosshairs, circles where fire
would fall first.

Niagara, gone before the sirens finished.
A moment’s hush
as men and women
measured home
in kilotons and fallout.

Saskatchewan, left blank —
not worth the price of a missile.

Safety by omission,
by emptiness,
forgotten on some list.

We spoke of mercury drifting downstream,
PCBs in river mud,
uranium tailings beneath spruce and snow,
rust-red barrels bleeding toxins
into generations unborn.

Yet the most toxic material
was memory itself —
what we know but file away,
bury in reports
marked “acceptable risk.”

On the bus, alone, I thought about cost,
the federal cheque for diesel fumes,
secrets measured in silence,
knowing my home is on a target list
penned in a bunker far away.

It’s not always a drum
marked skull and crossbones.
Sometimes danger is an empty bus,
a dot on a map,
or a place left blank.

What we carried home
was heavier than paperwork —
knowledge leaking like chemical rain
into corners of the mind,
corroding quietly.

And years later,
I still see that map
unrolled in my mind,
Niagara marked for fire,
Saskatchewan spared by indifference.

I remember the hollow rattle
of that empty bus,
uneasy laughter of those
who knew too much,
secrets in a folder stamped Confidential.

Some knowledge never settles;
it floats in the bloodstream,
a faint metallic aftertaste,
proof that what we bury
never stays buried.

And sometimes,
the most toxic materials we handle
are the ones we keep inside —
sealed and hidden,
burning quietly in the dark.

***

Mike Keenan belongs to the Ottawa Independant Writers organization. YouTube: Make Aging Great Again; Dealing With Dementia; poetry; Facebook. Podcasts: The Retirement Coach. Books: Don’t Ever Quit: A Journal of Coping with Crisis & Nuturing Spirit.