I seek him on two dusty shelves
Of a built-in wardrobe
Bare of most belongings.
I find a strange notebook
Filled with dreams, I think.
I do no more than glance, I have no right.
There are documents, type-written in the eighties
His service record –
How did I never realise his eyes were green?
In a box full of odds and ends
There is a cigarette.
Voided by the years of that hated tobacco smell.
Several pairs of extra laces,
dark brown and black.
And an empty tin of spearmint sweets.
In a velveteen box a Pro Patria bar
Striped and slightly grubby.
A fine chain of gold
A brooch that says ex unitate vires
A bosun’s whistle (if that it be) in a shaped and ornate case
Two faded pictures of people I do not know
(But I recognise the square face and rounded cheeks passed down to me.)
And a young, dark-bearded man in Navy uniform.
So different from the grey and distant man
I knew not how to love.
I find his ceremonial sword
A sharp-edged relic of a bygone era
Hard as love and bright as tears and cold
Not to be touched.
But, looking closer, I find the sword did not
belong to him, in fact, but to his father.
