1961 in the TB Vaccination Line

ALAN BIRKELBACH

May 24, 2020

My mother told us stories of when she lived

in London during World War Two.

In the middle of ironing shirts,

the air raid sirens, mounted

on the churches and power poles,

would tear the moment like paper.  You had to stop

everything, put the iron on the stove to cool,

and run to the underground shelters.

Even there and then, under the concrete,

you could hear the buzz bombs coming,

A queer kind of angry-bee rattle.

Mothers held their children’s ears.

The worst, she said, was when the silence started.

The fuel on the bombs ran out.  Then it was counting

Ten seconds.  She remembered people

numbering on their fingers

waiting for an impact,

imagining cracks in the cement,

wondering what windows might be broken,

what brick walls might have tumbled into the street.

In 1961 we stood in the silent line

that snaked down the street and around the block

to get the free tuberculosis vaccinations.

All the mothers had grips like vises

on 5-year-old hands.

I had only a vague notion of fear

or about what tuberculosis was.

My mother told me

there would probably be a scar

on my arm.  I could be afraid

but not cry she said.  It would

all be over soon and I would be fine.

Now, today, the lady I travel with

makes me wear a handkerchief

to protect me when we go shopping.    

It makes me look like a bandit.

I can’t breathe, I say,

but I still do it. She is wiser than me.

She fought cancer twice

and is still around to carry the memory.

I remember she has a scar

on her upper left shoulder.

She is only trying to protect

what is in hand.

I see something in her eyes and learn

a new way to breathe, remember my old scar.

Ten seconds hang like stone between us.

There was the same drawn look

in my mother’s face,

filled with the syllables she dared not voice:

Let the silence pass over us. 

Let it be meant for someone else.

ALAN BIRKELBACH is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters and the Academy of American Poets.  He is the author of 11 books of poetry.  He is the 2005 Texas State Poet Laureate.