A Scot in London. (poem)

“A Scot In London”

My Grandfather; a Scot in London,
had served in two world wars –
He’d always been an active man.

Moved heaven and earth in order
to visit me in the foster homes –
a million miles from the war zone.

He went to London for investigation,
the cancer too tightly bound to him
and through him for any success –

When he called for me, I wasn’t allowed
to visit, it was said, it was too difficult;
and they took their daughter instead.

I can’t imagine his pain, tucked in a bed
In Guys, rivets of pain, thistles in his throat,
under the hostile stare of my foster family.

The undoing of him, from his ancestral roots;
to me, an abstract memory, not seen much.
Yet the love was as powerful as a benediction.

(c) Rosalind J. Lee