Google Streetview
I show him how easy it is
to become a lens, a cyber-visitor
swooping up Overbury Avenue
like a steady bird or a boy on a bike.
We pass the row where high explosive
fell, blew glass across the front room,
but his door isn’t there, replaced by flats
before I was born.
Here’s a plane tree, lower branches
out of reach, and somewhere on the bark
initials carved with a penknife
in the summer of forty-three.
I liked this very much, a delicate and poignant poem, with a lovely tonal quality.
One minor point: when I read the poem aloud, I kept automatically dropping in the definite article before “summer” in the last line. I don’t know if this is just me or that the line could do with another syllable! Anyway, something for you to ponder.
Thank you Mark, always wonderful to recieve your positive feedback and suggestions. I wrote the poem yesterday and wanted to share it. I think you are right about last line. Interestingly the boy in the poem has also given me feedback on my choice of bomb type. Apparently incendaries were ‘phosphorous and had a tiny charge – it was a high explosive bomb a block or so away.’
I’ll put the poem, essentialy a draft, away for a while and come back to it. Thanks again.