Anna Taylor
A Last Note, 1917
Stumps of trees
blackened through the stumps
limbs
Brains spewing down your shoulder
crunched still to a rifle butt
Blessed with the canons
and the ‘spirit of the bayonet’
you said you’d abandon.
For a couple of months
your chest caved
rats, also charred
when your pals managed
to recover you.
And the hugs and the kisses
I wrote as a last but, but
not, as I thought, farewell
A greeting for your 18th birthday;
your first abroad. Such excitement lifted you
into that London train,
already fading
They found my xxxxes fluttering -
some blasted pocket, they said.
The top left one I gave
a stitch to on that -
our last evening at home?
Meandering
benighted
the afternoonIs this what remains
The woman your sisters
still call
mother?
Page(s) 68
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