Dora leads us out of the grassy meadow and into the Ninth-month midnight for tonight’s prompt for dVerse Poets Pub. I remember my eldest sister, war-baby, vulnerable to the sky’s wail and impact.

"Out of the Ninth-month midnight"

Afterwards, in Peacetime, a lime-green sapling I emerged out of the Fifth month, May. Not long after Beltaine, budding Hawthorn leaves and gracing the Great Oak. The NHS was birthed, and I was given a Ration Book in 1953.

But in 1939 Carole came out of the Ninth month, midnight, before the German bombers dropped their payload on the Thames estuary and returned furtively across the Channel. Lay in the cot, tiny, while Lecky Labrum - eschewing the Anderson air-raid shelter that night - threw an eiderdown over her newborn and prayed. 

The flour the sugar the lard and the rice the semolina the tea all jiggled on the dresser and frisked onto the floor in the blast. The shelter was destroyed, emptied of its air. The groceries lay in a powdery heap. 

Eric Labrum came home from the Oil Refinery to his treasures.


©  Kathy Labrum McVittie  4 November 2024