A Poem for Remembrance Day 2012

Tobruk

for LRH

Silence,

not for two minutes

but sixty years.

Only then does he start to talk, 

not to his family but his brothers,

those soldiers in slippers,

with cemetery teeth,

their medals saucepan lids

pinned to punctured chests,

their stories shrapnel

lodged in matter

from a distant land called War.

Later, I gather rusted splinters,

their gist a desert expedition:

mirage of wire,

signs in barbed Gothic script,

hot metal surfacing

through oceanic sand, in front, behind. I panic,

turn to trace his steps,

a trail of breadcrumbs

swallowed up by circling dunes;

not knowing how this terror ends,

if my father will survive

to speak its name.

                       © Deborah Harvey 2011

My father was ground crew in the RAF during the second world war and saw service in Palestine, Egypt, Tripolitania and Italy.

This poem is from my collection, Communion, published by Indigo Dreams.  If you like, you can read some more here.