After Corey Mesler

Last night I was a child again
in Jutland, Denmark, nineteen forty-two.

My mother’s milk surged as I suckled
and kneaded her distended breast.

A growing roar shook windowpanes,
her dripping nipple swung away.

She shuddered, looked outside and up
as dark things in a wedge crept by.

She wept and trembled, crushed
my face into her breast as engine noises dimmed.

I sucked in eerie silence, blissful, unaware
that German mothers and their children
soon would suffer, starve and die.

Author’s Comments: Corey Mesler’s poem, “Last Night I Was a Child Again in Raleigh,” was published in his book, Among the Mensans by Iris Press, 2017.

According to family legend, British bombers flew over the hospital when I was born on March 7, 1942 in Nørresundby on the north shore of Limfjorden in northern Jylland (Jutland). They would probably have been headed for the German naval bases and industry around Hamburg, Germany, where many civilians would be killed.
We were relatively safe in Denmark under German occupation.

Image credit: British fighters, bomber escorts, superimposed on Pablo Picasso’s painting, ‘Maternity’