May 2020
Bio Note: I am hunkering down in Long Beach, California, wondering what is in store for us all.
The pandemic and climate of fear reminds me of times during childhood when I was terrified of things beyond
my control. “Fear” is from my second poetry collection, Deep Red, published in 1995.
Fear
Fear was a blue-black funnel
crossing the pasture.
The warning siren cut my sleep
the way pain divides the body.
Mom wrapped me in bedding,
Dad drove us across town,
Mom saying hurry, hurry,
to Grandmother’s cellar,
where I imagined I could smell
the frogs that jumped from the corners
as we descended the stairs.
What if a tree fell on the door
and we were trapped
like this, in flashlight,
in standing water,
living on the pickled beets
and canned green beans
that lined the shelves,
until this food was gone
and we were forced to eat the frogs?
And what if everyone we knew
were killed outright,
or picked up and set down
in another state?
With no one to pull the tree from the door
we would shrivel into nothing.
When the all-clear sounded,
we climbed the stairs
to find our world
miraculously in place.
Later, at school in California,
the awful siren wailing,
I was sure it was the bomb
this time, not just another drill.
I crouched under my desk,
head down, arms locked
around my knees.
No pickled beets
or jumping frogs
to buy some time to live on.
(Originally appeared in Deep Red)
©2020 Donna Hilbert
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It is very important. -JL