Elegy
My mother
sobbing
Her sisters older
younger
sobbing
Edmonton
deep winter
1944
what I remember
in the cold rundown
Boyle Street January
semi-dark afternoon
a Harvard Trainer
droning
what I don’t remember
the names coming from
the radio my mother
her sisters five women
sobbing
What I remember
frost on the panes
What I did not know
men die
What I don’t remember
a father
What I did not know
how well this
child of four
was cared for by
five sisters
What I did not know
town girls
school romances
best ball
player hockey
player
most liked
shyest cutest
Airmen
Soldiers
their families
already told
Town girls now
city women hearing
for the first time
what I did not know
What I remember
a Harvard Trainer’s
drone
there
then not
***
Note: During World War II, Edmonton had a Royal Canadian Air Force training base for Commonwealth pilots
How lucky we were, those of us in Canada and the US, too young to really know anything about war. But WWII had its way with us! Even in Edmonton Alberta, thousands of miles from the action in Europe or the Pacific, the war planes in training were droning overhead, as Wade here relates. Nobody really escaped that war, and as Wade points out, even what we did not know as children came back to haunt us. Comes back to haunt us. Haunts us still.