Phillip Mann – writer, teacher and theatre director

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 5^th 2015