A Memory of War

Torn from dream
and very like a dream:
two half worlds
telescoped as one.

Asleep, my mother next to me,
my bed made up downstairs
on doctor's orders.

A sudden shock,
a scream, a pang
of fear and stab of pain
that take the breath from me
and savage me awake -

and there's my father,
motionless,
limbs spread like some crashed eagle
breathless too, on top of us,

his hard, white Air Raid Warden's hat
skewwhiff upon his head,
his gas mask on his back;
thick rubber-booted -

and the ceiling coming down on all of us,
the whole world turning white.
One thing I do remember vividly...

No, not the missing ceiling,
that was soon put right.
The French doors to the garden:
six glass panels, leaded;

assemblages of diamond shapes
and triangles of glass, now curved with grace,
convex, concave alternately.
You might have thought they'd been designed that way.

"Blast do do funny things," my Granddad said.
I don't recall them
ever being different, after that.

The house, like people that I'd get to know:
among its many wounds, this one
that no one thought to heal.

*

This is my contribution for today to Writers Island's NATIONAL POETRY's Free Writing Month.