LEGACY

Mother’s memories crackle, crystallise and coalesce
entangled in familiarity and days-end prayer
and flesh out well-known bones of oft told tales
to make a man for me to love.

A restless reckless man
who hullabalooed down hairpin-riddled hills
amid the war free carefree days
in a red and rollicking rooster of a car
to the singing swaggering inns of Wales.

A loving gentle man
who framed a kiss-me face in miner’s hands
while fear-strained peace hopes upped and fled
and tough and tender wooed and wed his willing lass
in cool cathedral mountain ferns.

A brave and gallant man
who, smiling, shoulder slung a sailor’s sack of hope
in the proud and patriotic duty days
to test his pit man’s mettle on the sour and sullen seas,
and save his wife, his Wales, his world.

A tearful frightened man
who woke fear-slimed and shrieking from his dreams
in pitiful shore-leaves meant to heal
and in the sobs of his sick and once-seen son
heard blazing screams in ice-bound seas.

A careless luckless man
who eased his guard in safe and sheltered sunlit seas
Caribbean cradled close by the shore;
who, laughing, failed to spot the lethal sharking shape
which shattered peace and skin and bone.

And I shall learn to love this man
though speaking ‘father’ snags my tongue
and all his substance but a mother’s memory gift
seeking a son’s echoes among the prayers:
Her imagery is my legacy, nevertheless:
 
Good night, God bless.
 

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I never really bonded with my stepfather, and my real father only saw me once as a 6-month old baby - on a two-week shore leave during WW2. He was killed shortly afterwards [aged 24] off the coast of Trinidad. A torpedo hit the ammunition hold when my father and his friend were chatting on the hatch. Nobody else was killed. My mother vividly kept his memory alive each night at day's end prayers.