I was six when the Japanese surrendered
and the nighttime blackouts ended. At last
we could open the curtains and shades, letting
the stale light pour over the sills. Mr. Posey,
our neighborhood air-raid warden, no longer
walked the streets in his white pith helmet
looking for leaks, then stopping them up
with a tap of his stick on the windows.
In those years, the yellow paper shades
had pulse with flat rings about the size
of silver dollars, and when the shades were up
during the day I shifted my head to sight
through those tantalizing apertures,
peering into whatever I wanted to see.
But after the war the world was different,
and the people who made window shades
had better material to work with, paper
that wouldn’t crack and leak light onto
the tip of Mr. Posey’s stick, or stripe his
eager face, and they stopped putting pulls
on the shades, so you had to pinch the hem
to draw them down or let them go, the spring
in the roller flapping them up to the top
where they slapped a few times to a stop,
and everything beyond became one looming
square of outside, not just the little piece
I could see through the pull. We had to look
at everything together, once the war was over
and the light let back into the world.