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.
