The Lookout Boy

Gold cherry

By fatboy74

Tue, 13 May 2014
  • 5112 reads
12 comments
 

No blood relation.
Sentry at the gatehouse
of some vast and rambling estate.
His wife had followed him down
through the years, held the front-line
in Victoria Sandwich for the WI,
darned his socks, explained away
the sudden silences -
the cavernous looks.

The summer we visited,
he'd let me follow his shadow
to the chicken coop,
the 'lookout' man he said.
We kept low around the perimeter,
his frown skirting the line of trees.
Inside the wire an enemy lost;
I held the woven trug nearly as big
as myself, in awe beneath the weight
of a dozen newly laid.
The last box he offered to me,
half distracted now, a weary gaze
and mind mislaid in dark remembrance.
I reached blind, filled my palm
and dared not breathe,
its perfect outline warm still,
my open hand a balancing trick.
He took it, set it down
in its bed of straw -
the first and only time
I saw his smile.

Her screaming woke us all.
He'd made his escape through
the downstairs privy window,
They followed the trail of blood and glass
to his prize vegetables where he'd
forged a trench from sludge,
his cabbages destroyed,
the runner beans a victim of
his random fire – his ancient
bones and milky flesh encased
in mud this one last time,
his final foray over the top
before his empty shell,
wrapped and saluted,
was lowered deeper into ground;
the corner of the local church ripe
with those that shared his family name,
brother to brother -
dispatched through gritted teeth
by the vicar whose roof he'd mended,
twenty years before.

Certificate PG
Poem
Autobiography

Comments

Submitted by scratch on

Ha!  Fatboy this is an absolute beauty.  Use of language and imagery, the play on the vocabulary of munitions and things military and the final few raw phrases all combine to provide poetry of the highest standard.  

It's so wonderful to see you post something.  I expected a piece of high calibre (no pun intended) from you and you delivered.  Good luck in the competition.

 

Submitted by Linda Wigzell Cress on

Great to see some of your work again Fatboy, and as scratch says, this is a worthy offering. The contrast between life pre war and post/during war is really strkingly good poetry.

Linda

Submitted by Rhiannonw on

You bring his life and his post-war stress to life so vividly. I assume it is actual autobiography. Rhiannon

 

Submitted by fatboy74 on

Hey Scratch, thanks so much mate, I saw the comp and thought why not? it's an oldie, which I've revised a little. Cheers for the best wishes hope you and yours are well. Atb :)

thanks Linda great to hear from you, I always forget how much I like this website and the kind people on it, many thanks to you and Rhiannon for reading and enjoying. I haven't read the other comp entries yet, so I'll look forward to that. I always seem to have written autobiog - the facts are all true, although I wasn't at the funeral, but I remember finding that egg like it was yesterday not 35 years ago.

 

 

Submitted by torscot on

A late read of your entry FB74, and a little gem  it is.

Plus I'm in complete agreement with Scratch and Linda's  comments.

Kind regards.

 

torscot

Submitted by rjnewlyn on

Hi Fatboy. Trying to catch up a little with things ... This is really excellent - as always, of course. Reassuringly assured writing and packing quite a punch.

Rob

 

 

Submitted by rjnewlyn on

This is our (belated!) Facebook and Twitter Pick of the Day! Please share/retweet if you like it

Picture Credit: http://tinyurl.com/mjvtdtw

 

Submitted by Insertponceyfre... on

Lovely to see this being highlighted. Fatboy come back and write some more!

 

Submitted by fatboy74 on

Hey Rob, I'm so out of touch it took me ten minutes to log on - thanks for that and to Poncey who always cheers me up - if I do write anything this is the only place it ever goes. smiley I don't even have to make up my own smiley faces any more :-)

 

Submitted by celticman on

i remember it well. 

 

Submitted by Di_Hard on

I remember meeting my great uncle who fought in the first world war, he had to wear a special boot as his foot had been mangled. Your poem brought this back to me so strongly - he loved birds too, though it was the wild ones. The feeling of them being surrounded by some kind of sea which you can't see but they are having to swim in, keep afloat in every day. Brilliant poem, a story, detail, character, history

 

Submitted by fatboy74 on

Thanks for the lovely feedback, very much appreciated.