First World War Commemoration Event: A Poem by John Pratt

Holymoorside Bowling Club  has responded to the Parish council’s invitation to contribute to the WW1 Commemoration Event at the Village Hall on Saturday 23rd August in the the person of Moorside Writers’ John Pratt. He will present and read his poem, Summer Leaves, which refers to the price he and his family paid for his father’s brief participation in WW1.

Summer Leaves.

It left him stranded, his island

out of hailing distance.

My treble voice thrashed out words

for him (and all the world) to catch:

that ash had fallen on his waistcoat

or that I needed to go to the lavatory.

Took the stage through a curtain of shame

– enter with dumb dad.

We settled for barren facts: short on

conversations, no jokes.

The moment was for others: ‘Tell that to Dad.’

His deafness stuck in my throat.

Once he knew the land of waking sounds

consonants just caught,

secret undertones, the hush of a lover’s breath.

Until his eighteenth year

could hear the heave of full-leaved branches

in the breeze: promises

of summers down his English days; before those

all unspoken weeks in France.