Poem: Beyond the Gate

Beyond the Gate

Behind suburban lawns, neat flower beds,
In the no-man’s spinney beyond the garden gate,
Under tangled branches, brambles, and deserted nests,
I find a grave-like hollow in the shade.

With shelving sides, scooped clean and rough,
Some hands had dug a curved and shallow bole,
Just large enough, and small enough,
To take and keep, at eight years old, my soul.

Blue never-ending 60’s summer skies,
Of ‘Spectrum is Green’, and ‘Thunderbirds are Go!’
From a US base an F4 Phantom flies,
Our fields, our town, lost in the sun-blocked haze below.

As jets explode the summer Suffolk skies,
My youngest brother runs towards the house, and cries.