April showers bring May flowers
Germany 1945.
Two sisters pick soft yellow chamomile
On an open birdsong-filled hill
Chamomile scents plummet onto yellow fingers
Sunlight shoots down from above.
Their foreheads glisten
with beads of sweat. The girls run,
Tumble down the hills
Laughing, digging, tossing flowers
Into the air where
Two buzzing dots
Mark the sky.
The older sister takes her sibling’s hand
And runs runs runs runs
Toward home as dots
Become airplanes
That fire hard chamomile bullets
At slow moving targets.
~ Allan Boss
Allan Boss lives in Calgary with the mountains in clear sight of his home were it not for the condo building blocking the way. His poem Cutline appeared in Writing the Land, he’s published numerous short stories, songs, plays and culture columns in all kinds of places, including bathroom walls. His stageplays The Chair, My Burning Bush, Curves in the Road, and Swimming with Goldfish have been produced in Edmonton and Calgary. His CBC Ideas program updrafts won nominations for top international awards which include: Peabody Award, a New York Festivals Award, a Gabriel Award and a Prix Italia Award. He recently signed contracts with Playwrights Canada Press for two books on Mavor Moore due out in December 2010, but he hasn’t mailed them back yet.
Thanks to Allan Boss for this simple, terrifying evocation that, similarly to the “daybreak” of my Todesfugue, we must always remember.