LESLEY WHEELER

Bringing in the May, 1941

When the sirens cried,
my grandmother hustled four
babies into the mud-crowned
steel of the backyard shelter
and hooded them
by turning her back on the planes—
speck of grit in a wet city

The window glass blew
into the parlor
like a wish, like the shards
of a dandelion

No moving vans in blitzed
Liverpool, not even horses,
just white rubble strewn
like hawthorn branches—
she pushed the furniture  
in a handcart through 
the reborn streets

In the coal cellar of the new
house, she sang of the bright
spring fires catching,
blossoming—
They trembled  
as the morning light
trickled down in ribbons