Ha, & there I was expecting hills, Max.
The jaggedness of stanzas informing the jagged quality of the memory.
Doug
> On Jan 27, 2016, at 9:12 AM, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> The Ravenhills
> [Wellington, 1947]
>
> What was it about them
> made my mother their friend,
> my father suspicious?
>
> Family friends, I sensed
> for the first time,
> could make for fraught
> long silences at home.
>
> Off you go, visit them,
> he must have said.
> This she must fit in
> between home duties
> not to be ignored.
>
> So the evening meal
> was on the hob by noon.
> The quick electric train
> and tram got us there.
>
> What was their home?
> Did they have one?
> Not quite - their job was
> in the Air Force base -
> high wire gates,
> a sentry-box, no planes,
> no air-field even - huts.
>
> One was the canteen
> run by the Ravenhills.
> Hence his blue serge suit.
>
> Their voices! - my first ever
> from the North of England -
> sang of cosiness, luv.
> Why so far from home?
>
> The war was over, New
> Zealand had small need
> of airmen, aircraft,
> canteens, portly folk
> keeping the tea-urn hot.
>
> Mrs R and Mum put heads
> together for long gossips,
> intertwined fortunes,
> others’ misfortunes.
>
> Mr R minded things.
> No airmen came in.
> Childless, he didn’t know
> how to talk to kids;
>
> put on music: Gracie Fields
> sang about Capri;
> cheeky George Formby
> had a ukelele
> cleaning windows.
>
> I saw myself in a cockpit.
> Rockfist Rogan and I
> crash-landed our Spitfires nearby.
>
> I pretended I could
> play billiards - against
> myself, no contest.
>
> If Dad had come, he’d
> have taught me how
> to wield the heavy cue.
>
> He’d have driven us home.
> Trams nor trains nor Ravenhills,
> none of them were for him.
>
> Mum said: they’re finishing up.
> Nowhere in the world to go.
> Vera Lynn sang me home
> to my own little room again.
Douglas Barbour
[log in to unmask]
https://eclecticruckus.wordpress.com/
Recent publications: (With Sheila E Murphy) Continuations & Continuations 2 (UofAPress).
Recording Dates (Rubicon Press).
Done in by creation itself.
I mean the gods. Not us. Well us too.
The gods moved into books. Who wrote the books?
We wrote the books. In whose dream, then are we dreaming?
Robert Kroetsch.
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