REMEMBERING A MAN

I remember my mother
Remembering a man
who hullabalooed down hairpin-riddled hills
amid the war-free carefree days
in a red and rollicking rooster of a car
to the swaggering inns of peacetime Wales

Reminiscing … ah, yes:
Good night, God bless

I remember my mother
remembering a 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

Reminiscing … Hmm, yes:
Good night, God bless.

I remember my mother
remembering a 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.

Reminiscing … oh, yes:
Good night, God bless

I remember my mother
Remembering a man
who woke fear-slimed and shrieking from convoy dreams
in pitiful shore-leaves meant to heal
and in the screams of his sick and once-seen son
heard of shipmate’s echoes ablaze in icy seas.

Reminiscing … hell, yes:
Good night, God bless

I remember my mother
Remembering a 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.

Reminiscing … finally, yes:
Good night, God bless.

I remember my mother
remembering a man:
And I shall learn to love this man
Though speaking ‘father’ snags my tongue
And all his substance but mother’s memory gift
for a son’s echo in a post-war prayer:

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.