The Black Hut
In the bombed-out gaps of terraced rows
clomping in Co-op car parks on brick stilts
Ex-forces, mysterious, alluring, stand the black huts
Tarred and tarp’d with windows framing treebark faces, cross kid-chasers,
“what do you want laddie?”
Bottle-tops clatter and Jacks are shuffled
Some pledge to legion,
others rapt in battalion,
regimented, chin out
purposeless civvy life rotting their spirit
Black Huts sat solitary, before towns all changed
in back streets or by the sea
with black-windowed, light-sucking pitch-slapped boat bellies and Anderson-arched attributes…
…their barracking past
the sorrow of the empty bunk…
Sunken planes, shot up boats,
mates presumed dead/captured
shared sufferance of the captured
The klaxons, the gunfire
the incendiary roar
the screams
the orders
the silent Black Hut
These huts. Black huts
together, yet breaking ranks and groaning planks in empathy,
They try to forget; we can; we can’t; we mustn’t
Imploding in my clenched memories
my ancestors smile, proudly,
in fusty drawers and rusty tins
badges and pins, ribbons and cuttings
and photos - they anchor the watch
let slip the hawser
and fly a silent flag
they set us free
to tap on their door and run off...