Everything shook and rattled at my school
in the spring of `52, under the flight path 
of Lambert-St. Louis Airport.  I was eleven, 
part of the school’s five-percent Jewish quota.

Times called for careful assimilation—
I went to Jewish Sunday School every week,
but it was in my nearly non-Jewish school
I watched a black-and-white
Holocaust
documentary.
In the dark, alone, 
I saw pictures of souls taking flight.

My innocence 
rose into the sky,
rattling more than windows.