My Summer on Raspberry Hill **, a rewrite of an older freeverse Options

[Ali zonak]

My Summer on Raspberry Hill

In 1944 I was too young
to go to war.
Coal-fired locomotives,
like smoke-belching dragons,
dragged draftees away
to boot camps, then to be
swallowed up by battlefields.

Trainloads of young men
passed Raspberry Hill.
At each whistle blow
we stopped picking berries
from laden bushes and rushed
to the overpass, leaned
over the railing,
waiting
for the dragon’s smoke
and vapor to carry us
to his fearful
lair among the clouds.

We heard the whooshing
of wings. Not the dragon,
but an army scout plane hard-landed
on the railroad tracks.

Uninjured, the pilot grinned goofily
and waved:
“Hey, kids! Did ya see him?”
“Who?”
“The Jap with a blister on his ass . . . .”
But there were no Japanese soldiers;
that fly-boy must’ve been flying
upside down far too long.

Our Mexican farmhand
scampered down the embankment,
ran along the tracks waving his bandana
to warn the approaching dragon.
The monster screeched,
stopped . . . just in time.

From above we stared
at those gaunt faces below
peering through windows:
enemy prisoners,
heading for POW camp.

Moments later, the dragon snorted,
puffed and screamed.
We rushed to the other bridge railing
for one more look
at those foreign soldiers.

“Crummy Nazies,” someone said,
but the rest was swallowed up
by the shrieking dragon
as he turned around the bend
and then out of sight.

We picked more berries
to fill our buckets.
Agnes placed one between her lips,
and I stole the succulent fruit
with mine. On Raspberry Hill.

[greenwich]

This poem is delightful. The child exposed to the POWs
in transit on the imagined dragon blowing fumes of smoke. A great juxaposion between reality and fantasy until the refrain Crummy Nazis. Picking the berries seemed to recall a bucolic ideal but taking the berries from Agnes lips suggests burgeoning sensuality which is very touching