After the accident the forest returned,
blanketing forsaken machinery
in a gentle, unfamiliar embrace.
Stacks of contaminated televisions lie in
heaps, repurposed as shelters
for the returning fauna.
Computer screens that once glimmered
with potency now lie abandoned,
tainted by a film of excrement,
and something that we mustn’t name.
From a certain perspective, time stands still.
Sika deer dance across
radioactive ley lines;
undeterred by the threatening
names that we have conferred,
and which they have
never understood.
Wild boars roam the zones,
our evacuation excluding them
no longer as they stomp past
green pheasants;
their bronze mantles blazing
in the solitude of our retreat.
After the accident the forest returned,
staking a claim to the life
we abandoned.
Adult and juvenile wild boar walking
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