Simon Fletcher
Ode to Gilbert Fletcher, my grandfather
When you died I couldn’t then find
words I needed to say just what
I thought of you. But I sensed your
passing as a moment of dis-
location and troubled sadness.
I can see you, now, standing by
St Anne’s church, in the sunshine
of a spring morning; your hands cupped
neatly behind your long, straight back.
‘A proper gent’, people were used
to say about you. On Sunday
afternoons at tea the cat, perched
on the windowsill, washed your white hair.
Remembering how we worked in
the fields, sometimes, I see your thin
frame leaning on a pitchfork ‘just
watching the fire’, as you once said,
through the thick smoke of hedge clippings.
I felt that something was lost young
and never recovered. War
damage dogged you it seems though
shy you rarely spoke of such things.
You struggled with confusion in
senility. The last three months
were difficult; before your soul
shivered in the winter churchyard,
and you lay, I hope now, at peace.
Page(s) 36
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