A short poem in memory of my grandmother, Elsie Brown.
I do not know if this has ever happened to you, but there are moments in life it seems, when suddenly events come together and create a new awareness. It can be something one reads, someone you meet, a chance remark, a forgotten letter discovered at the back of a shelf…. Whatever.
The following poem is inspired by one such moment and, like a coin cast into a still lake, the ripples spread wider and wider.
*
THE LEAF
I open the book with care.
It is old, the binding loose.
It has stood, unregarded,
On my shelf for years.
Revealed is a single leaf,
Still green despite the years,
Pressed tight, its shape flat,
Stamped upon the page.
It was my gardma’s book, I know
unopended, I guess,
Since the moment she,
Placed the leaf within.
And what was that moment?
What made her pause?
And with the love that marked her life
Chose a leaf to mark her place.
Had the bread risen?
Or washing dried on the line?
Or had the postman knocked twice
Bearing a letter from overseas,
News from a man,
Somewhere in France,
Trapped in the trenches,
Knee deep in water,
Sending a message,
Home from the front.
“Be home for Christmas.
This war can’t last long.”
And survive, he did,
my Grandfather,
Though talk he did not,
Of the ‘holiday,’
Of the Passchendael flowers
Or the smell of the Somme.
Or so I was told…
For I came much later, on the scene,
In the midst of another war
Another story.
***
I replaced the leaf
Where it had rested
For many years,
And closed the book,
Unprepared for the sudden…
The stab of grief
At the memory of a woman I loved,
Who died when I was far from home
And left too small a legacy.
Sweet memories. Yes, and this…
A leaf,
pressed,
between pages
Phillip Mann
Dec 5th 2015
Thank you, Phil – it is evocative. Was her experience echoed by your mother’s?