Remembering The Fifties

The war was over before I was born

but reminders lingered

in secret places of my wandering childhood: 

raspberries, blackcurrants, strawberries, gooseberries,

overgrown allotments of delight,

abandoned by old men who’d dug for victory,

and quietly downed tools when it was won.

My mother claimed the sweetie man was dead,

but Mary from the next close down 

would slip me coupons from her ration book.

How could I know her fond benevolence 

flowed from a love for my elder brother?

My only offering, in return:

suspicious and conditional devotion.

I was forbidden to explore the bedroom wardrobe,

where, beneath my mother’s fearsome fox-fur, lurked

the Home Guard Sten Gun that my father treasured.

It terrified and lured me into disobedience.

Two policemen came to claim it back,

summoned, I knew, by my secret sin.

 Jubilation was anticipated

when everyone lined up and waited hours

to glimpse a new-crowned Queen

hurtling down shabby Airbles Road

past steel mills and the worked-out pits,

her huge black Rolls departing at such speed

she surely failed to notice or admire

the Lion Rampant and the Union Jack 

my father had so loyally unfurled,

fluttering, ignored above our cracked front window.