Value of an Image

An effective point of view on a major issue can work in its reliance on a fanciful image, the concrete thereby enlarged.  In his poem "At the Bomb Testing Site," William Stafford calls attention to the danger all  life risks in the atomic bomb through the eyes of a lizard, who sees "an important scene/acted in stone for little selves."  The final stanza shows the lizard, vulnerable in expectancy. 

There was just a continent without much on it
under a sky that never cared less,
Ready for a change, the elbows waited.
The hands gripped hard on the desert.

William Stafford

The Way It Is, New & Selected Poems
Graywolf Press
Saint Paul, Minnesota