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You would have found me....

You would have found me.....

 

You would have found me in a perambulator

or on a small seat fixed to my mother's bicycle

It was a time of austerity, of making do with

socks that were darned and pullovers knitted

 

Our home was a prefabricated bungalow

erected along with others on a bomb site

The German Airforce had re landscaped the area

everything appeard to be new and so it was

 

As a family we cycled and walked for miles

along country lanes and into town

This was until the motorbike and sidecar arrived

a fearful machine known for its noise and discomfort

 

I was often found in the kitchen

with a small aluminium whistling kettle

I had an inexplicable attraction for it

there I helped with the baking of cakes and scones

 

The backdrop of a war was where I could be found

surrounded by bombed buildings

Food was rationed, so I grew up

feeling punished for no reason

 

You would have found me

at home happily amusing myself

Mother listening to the wireless

Father at work after years abroad in the Army

 

You would have found me day dreaming

of growing in a love for all animals and comics

You would have found me in 1940's England

under an English sun

◄ A Mysterious Warmth

Inner Conflict ►

Comments

<Deleted User> (23732)

Thu 26th Nov 2020 09:58

Amazing, well written

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Shifa Maqba

Thu 5th Nov 2020 18:47

What a beautiful story you've woven with your words.
The verse, "The backdrop of a war was where I could be found
surrounded by bombed buildings
Food was rationed, so I grew up
feeling punished for no reason" are some of the most evocative lines I've ever read in a poem.
Amazing!

<Deleted User> (9882)

Thu 5th Nov 2020 18:33

This was the era when people were of an entirely different breed than those of today

' we can take it '

was their motto and by heck, they could thank God!

great piece Keith and that line-

' the German Airforce had re-landscaped the area ' brilliant!

as brilliant as the poem itself.



Rose?

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M.C. Newberry

Thu 5th Nov 2020 16:30

Me too! You had to be around then to really know that deprivation
had its upside and being young managed to stimulate all sorts of
wonderful mind games and that great weapon of choice - the
imagination. Bomb sites became battlefields. Streets became
avenues of promise to the world that lay beyond. Home became
the refuge when the light began to fade and a voice would call out
to a child to come home - supper's ready! And bedtime saw a hiding place where a torch would flick on for a bit of pre-sleep reading of treasured comic books. Hitler's war was fading and the world we knew offered little in the way of luxury, but knowing what we knew and having what we had was enough.

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