I was born a week after Pearl Harbor
into a crib with an air raid siren.
It wailed nightly from the elm outside
until I went rigid as a hypnotist’s steel board,
too scared–even in my mother’s arms–to cry.

We moved cross-country when I was two
so my father could build the air strip
at Whidbey Island. There I was jumped on
by Zombie Doggy, a big red Irish setter
who loved me so much he knocked me down.
When they practiced firing on the artillery range,
Mother had to drive me to the other side of the island
because I screamed & cried and cried.

There are two things infants are afraid of:
falling and loud noises. This was my baptism
into touch and sound–being knocked flat
on my back by a dog licking my face,
the rage of artillery shells and sirens.

So much fear. What to do for it
but become a poet? Still afraid
of being knocked on my ass by love,
still living in a world at war.

Found at Poets Against War.