August 1914

One fragile moment
from a lost summer,

Old family names
on faded awnings,
Accounts kept
in ledgers, bound
like bibles

Great houses
like liners sailing
over doomsday fields,

Imperial England, shrunk
to a country garden
under distant blue hills;

At noon, thunder
sounds like a gunshot;
As a boy runs
shouting from the station
July 2013.