Beyond eternity
Yesterday my phone reminded me
I must observe a minute’s worth of silence
to honour those we’ve lost, and in compliance
I sat beneath a weeping willow tree,
no sounds but those of birds and bumble bees,
remembering all the workers who have died
attending to the needs of humankind.
Brave men and women I had never met,
who owed me no acknowledgment, and yet
had I been flattened by a grave disease
would seek to nurse me through the miseries
with fortitude I never should forget.
But deep abstraction made me think about
occasions in the 1970s
on Church Parade when I was in the Scouts
and forced to stifle sounds of boyish glee.
Despite “The Silence” quieting repartee
I’d be afflicted with an urge to shout,
and though I seized the opportunity
to conjure up the noise, and fear, and stenches
endured by men who perished in the trenches,
I’d question what that had to do with me.
Now stooped in my reflective reverie
I ponder why, in that reverberant hall
one minute stretched beyond eternity,
but here beneath the grieving willow leaves
a dozen minutes pass like none at all.
Yesterday my phone reminded me
I must observe a minute’s worth of silence
to honour those we’ve lost, and in compliance
I sat beneath a weeping willow tree,
no sounds but those of birds and bumble bees,
remembering all the workers who have died
attending to the needs of humankind.
Brave men and women I had never met,
who owed me no acknowledgment, and yet
had I been flattened by a grave disease
would seek to nurse me through the miseries
with fortitude I never should forget.
But deep abstraction made me think about
occasions in the 1970s
on Church Parade when I was in the Scouts
and forced to stifle sounds of boyish glee.
Despite “The Silence” quieting repartee
I’d be afflicted with an urge to shout,
and though I seized the opportunity
to conjure up the noise, and fear, and stenches
endured by men who perished in the trenches,
I’d question what that had to do with me.
Now stooped in my reflective reverie
I ponder why, in that reverberant hall
one minute stretched beyond eternity,
but here beneath the grieving willow leaves
a dozen minutes pass like none at all.