UNFINISHED – (The Churston Twelve) by Debra Westlake
Was it a day like this day,
A plain day
When the pewter sea is still
As remembering,
When sea mist shrouds the common,
A reluctant sun
Shrugs off a fist of cloud, burns
Sodium yellow?
Was it a day like this day,
The bracken crisped,
The bramble blackened on the branch
And hawthorn bare;
When a lone seagull forgets
That he can fly
And indignant cattle bellow
Of their loss?
Did the twelve boys of Churston,
Named on our cross,
Weep for their stark brothers
Of Flanders field,
Stripped of every pock-marked leaf,
Whose sentinel shadows
Of branch and twig
Laid bare?
Did they long for the twisty path
Down to our cove,
Thick with mouldering leaves,
Roots deep in blood
Red soil, fecund with the falling,
Where their names were carved
With shaky hearts
On trunks?
As the shrill-screech lark called across
That troubled earth,
Did they mourn the hungry finch,
The singing thrush
And the insolent robin,
Who insist on life;
Who know no more
Than that?