Runners up Poem 3: Remembering 1942 by Dorothy Nelson

My father, like me, was a carpenter,

content with his mouth full of nails.
He made castles and soldiers, a house for our Lizz;
she cried when I filled it with snails
tucked into doll’s beds, with rags under their heads,
the floor stained with silvery trails.

He was proud when he built the beech platform

and a banner to show off at the Guild.

In hazy half-light he’d work into the night.

We’d hear him tap-tapping, the banner flip-flapping.

When the news came the Guild would be cancelled

that year, he silently broke up the stage;
loaded the van and took off, a crazed-man.
He wouldn’t let on, but the beech planks had gone.

He took me one day for a walk in the copse

to a sun-dappled spot he had found,
where a tree-house, majestic, sat high in the branches,
where a rope-ladder dropped to the ground.

He left the next weekend for somewhere abroad.

We’d wait in our look-out for spies,
for parachute drops, or the sound of a plane;
didn’t know then we’d not see him again.