Forty-Four

Forty-Four

War hung lifeless off a page,
colour plates in gloomy hues,
smudged black and white lithos
led maps to slandered enemies.
Playing on grassy bomb shelter banks
we were never lost souls,
always alive with forty-four,
whatever forty-four meant?

Chalk sports day lines
stopped abruptly in winner’s clouds,
and losers dreams.
Between egg and spoon
we swapped war cards
garish, gory but ours.
Twenty years earlier, bombs fell
single file killers
waiting their howling turn
to flatten life’s hopes
and our parents concern,
but we wanted more.
More information, more pictures,
more tales of how we…..
but listening ears were mute.
No soldier, nor mother,
nor airmen, nor father
would utter a stricken word.
Skeletons in cupboards
wailed and wailed.

Then, sudden as flick-cards
after cub’s church parade,
we’d scurry to St. Nicks back room
where our new friend,
old and always rain-coated,
would spill stories,
at first biblical, but then
bulging with fighter pilots
Spitfires and Hurricanes, before
Heinkels and Messerschmitts tangled them
in the air above our eyes,
wooden straight back chairs,
with rear hymn book shelves
hailed a prayer to our slender aged whoops.
We learned all, those few years,
but mostly,
we learned enthusiasm.

Jerry Pike