Walking into the light

by R A Porter

Thursday 9th November 2023 9:32 pm

The morning sun silvered the poplar leaves

Somewhere others lay in the cut clay

waiting

And I smelt the sea’s dead things

As I walked.

Kelp, razor shells, crabs, limpets

School friends swam and laughed in sandy craters

And there I was walking

By Goat's Water, the Old Man looking down

As he had for all my life

And all those other lives before

The smell of wet bracken, sphagnum, washed slate

The sound of machines in the quarry,

Blown rock crushing against rock

Looking out to Bardsea,

Morecambe Bay silted with soft sand

And the smell of a gentle, smiling girl

whose fingers flickered in mine

As I walked

Mother’s scones, hot from the black oven

Father’s pipe tapping on the mantelpiece

All this I saw and felt and smelt and loved

As I walked

Into the light.

Comments

John Coopey

Mon 13th Nov 2023 22:01

We owe them so much. And to those who lost their lives in the Second World War. We should never forget how fragile is the construct of democracy.

R A Porter

Mon 13th Nov 2023 18:08

Thank you MC & Keith. I had the privilege of visiting the Somme battlefields a few years ago and was taken to Serre where Frank and so many others lost their lives that sunny summer morning in 1916. We will remember them indeed.

M.C. Newberry

Fri 10th Nov 2023 17:02

A fine evocation of the basis for Poppy Day and our annual national tribute to the fallen. My own maternal uncle, Ernest
Venner, a subaltern with the Rifle Brigade, was killed in1916
and is buried "over there" with his comrades. His picture,
in open-necked army kit, hands in pockets, looking out at me
from the distant past, serves as its own reminder of what
families hoped never to face as that "war to end all wars"
dragged on for another two years. My father managed to
survive both that conflict and the later Anglo-Irish war,
only to die from TB aged just 49 in a UK military hospital after
serving in uniform again in WW2.
Binyon's immortal words never resonate so much as at this
time of the year.
At the going down of the sun, and in the morning,
We will remember them.
The American word for autumn is never more poignant: FALL.

keith jeffries

Thu 9th Nov 2023 22:19

A poem rich in nostalgia and emotion; very appropriate for the time of year. This poem has the ability of being able to take the reader to the very location described. It is also tinged with sadness. The Somme was a dreadful and ghastly battle which claimed tens of thousands of lives.
Thank you for this,
Keith

R A Porter

Thu 9th Nov 2023 21:37

This poem is about my Great Uncle Frank Porter. He is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial at the Somme and on the war memorial in Ulverston, Lancs, his (and my Dad’s) home town. He was a Lance Corporal in the King’s Own Royal Lancaster Regiment and was killed on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. I only discovered this relatively recently and always think about him at this time of year.

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Walking into the light

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