A dark grey blanket of course rough wool following you
It had followed you from the camps on your repatriation
You’d broken out somehow after you’d thirsted and starved enough
making your way to the American lines you laughed about that
Losing your way you said you ended up in the Russian lines instead
You were like skin and bone when you wound your way home at last
The grey blanket covered our beds in those winters of shivering cold
Maybe it’s a good luck charm so you kept something you’d never let go
The blanket’s still following, I can see it hanging on the wash line now
Draped over the bright green plastic wire drying on a hot summers day
Unfurling with each gasp of a warm light wind its heavy wool cloth
Lifting above the bright red Montbretia flowers another legacy of love
Taken with sadness from your mother’s garden at Netherfield Farm
A memento of another kind, another place, we hold such things dearly.
©robcullen06082021
Oh that’s invokes such memories. We had a couple of those old blankets that my Dad brought back from the war. Decades later they were still being used, so tough but also so scratchy. And my Dad grew such bright flowers, montbretia, dahlias, sweet peas, carnations and stocks. Lovely scents too.
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My dad said his garden saved him!
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