When the siren wailed
and fingers of light clawed at the cold night sky,
mother put her winter coat on
wrapped me in a blanket
and ran to the bomb shelter in the basement of a school,
the only building not made of timber.
The school shock several times
and faces froze to statues on my mind.
When we came out
a factory nearby was ablaze
and hot debris thawed an icy road.
Nightly alarms became routine
but mother never took us down to the bomb shelter
didn’t like the idea of the school collapsing on top of us
but she always unhooked the ceiling lamp made of elongated glass-pearls,
which absorbed flickering candle light
and returned it as tiny rainbows.