Tags
2015, 20th century, 8*, age, attention, cypress, dark, daughter, dress, duty, eyes, facade, father, field, fields, green, hair, horizon, house, jaw, land, left, lifetimes, medals, mouth, portrait, Remembrance, sienna, sky, smile, standing, war, white, youth
looking ahead
at 18 he peered frightened and gentle –
the high forehead and round jaw of all
his youth, but that his mouth held duty
faintly pursed on the left, in reserve and
to attention, although the epaulettes were
(the wings of a choirboy) – at the strips
and strips of field and fields of umber
and sienna and the deepest darkest green,
as high as the land was wide, and it was
wide, to the white-washed house perched
on the higher horizon flanked by European
cypresses, at home in the fields; at three
she looked above the horizon, hair in all
direction to the sky, the purse to the left,
in attention and wan smile from above
the ruffled dress (soon to be outgrown with
every crumple-ene); the medals were worn
on the left side, the eyes up to the right;
they stood together to attention, in profile
before the wet facades of eleventh hour,
eyes forward, eyes down, pursed and still
three photographs in the house of an old friend: her father when newly enrolled in the army shortly before World War II – he served in Africa; herself in her then-best dress in the very early 1960s; father and daughter standing on a wet street collecting for Remembrance Day …
————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–
20th century wormhole: ‘God, who am I …?’
attention & smile wormhole: dear Lucy
daughter wormhole: mother and daughter
eyes wormhole: addictive
father & lifetimes wormhole: granny
field wormhole: walk from Castleton to Hope
green & white wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich – Plumstead 220211
hair wormhole: immeasurable love
horizon wormhole: Bexhill 140215
house wormhole: slightly / uphill
mouth wormhole: over-pink cagoule
sky wormhole: low afternoon
war wormhole: memorial
mlewisredford 