Snow on The Line
I have a compulsion to tell strangers on trains,
My son is in Afghanistan.
A man, who sits next to me, on the way back
from Newcastle, asks how do I cope?
Swirling snow blurs the landscape.
I don’t know where we are,
At Durham I move seats to face the right way
but when I go to the toilet a youth moves my coat
and takes my seat. He’s plugged in to a war film.
I know he’s a soldier, I can read the signs.
Outside Darlington we stop for snow on the line.
I say, ‘You’re a soldier.’ ‘A Marine.’ he corrects.
Then I say it, ‘My son’s in Afghanistan.’
He looks at me, no pity in his eyes.
He’s been. It’s tough. Can’t wait to go back.
At York I move seats, I want to face the wrong way,
read all the Sunday papers held at arms length:
3 soldiers injured in a roadside bomb in Helmand.
The trains stops, we’re outside Doncaster.
Snow on the line.
Harvest
She hears on the radio a talk on the Pomegranate harvest
In Nari Saraj and in her head she sees a small boy
in a walled orchard climbing a tree,
to tap the leathery rind of each pomegranate in turn,
and if he hears that chime like a dull bell
she sees him cup the fruit either side of the calyx crown
then with a quick twist sever it from the tree
and lob it into the long grass where his older brother
waits for the catch to add to his wicker basket.
She sees soldiers skirting the perimeter
one of them could be her son, she can’t
tell, they all look the same in their desert fatigues.
They are suspicious of the soft grenades that land
with a thud and a rupture of flesh
if the small boy Is quicker than his brother.
From up in the tree she sees how the boy
can watch the soldiers with their guns.
He is not afraid of them they give him pens
and play football with him when the elders
are away in the town.
She sees that if the small boy took a careful aim
he could hit one of the tin helmets but these soldiers
same age as his brother do not deserve
His prized fruit and though she sees
he is sorely tempted they both know
That the response would be
An unseasonal rain of bullets