BUSH DRIVING AT DUSK

(for Na Na)

Now you mention it, that’s a memory:

so many times with father we returned

from gathering firewood in the dusk, yearned

for the glow of bush branch and temporary

warmth to bask in before bundled to bed.

And of course, mother needed good stove wood,

so father had found where a dead tree stood

miles away. Chopped those fallen boughs instead.

Bush driving at dusk with lights still dim,

the scuttle of a rabbit underwheel—

reminds us now of the times we could feel

safe in the old car in the care of him.

At dusk the world contracts to elemental things;

our children trusting in what simple comfort brings.

Glen Phillips

February, 2015

RAINING AT UNIT 731部隊, PINGFANG, HARBIN

(Nana san ichi buta, or the ‘Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department’ of the Japanese Kwantang Army, occupying Helongjiang Province north China before and during World War II, was actually a place for testing chemical and germ warfare on live humans, mainly local Chinese. It is now a museum of horrors set up so that China and the world will never forget these atrocities—among the worst ever perpetuated by human beings on other human beings. To conceal its real purpose it was just known as Unit 731. No non-Japanese was allowed to leave it alive.)

My life led me to this latter day Gehenna,

in a manner of speaking, and now, despite

persistent funereal drumbeat of rain

on the umbrellas of the pilgrimage,

we walked steadfastly towards gas chamber

chimneys and concrete bunker relics

on those drear northern plains. Here, far from

my own beginning in red dust among salt lakes,

nearly eight decades have passed. Yet each step

destined, now I know, to advance me through 

through schoolrooms, stern halls of academia,

through steep valleys of Alps, past chill lakes

of sweet water and beside mounting forests;

or climbing tropic slopes to temple refuges.

Each step that once took me down into 

well-sandbagged wartime air-raid shelters

under blue skies of the Great South Land,

at night penciled with the searchlights

seeking Nippon’s reconnoitering planes,

spying for our secret munitions factories 

or bases for the US submarines. And up

again after the ‘all-clear’. Then, much later,

in step with my national service comrades,

I marched with my rifle toward firing ranges

to await apparition of distant raised targets.

Yes, every step so devilishly designed

to bring me to this drear day of light rain

of Pingfang District and dreaded Unit 731.

Glen Phillips

© October, 2014.