Memories of my Father

My father died when I was still too young

     for any of those bonding experiences

my friends used to talk about - the camping in the woods,

      the fairground rifle ranges, first shaving kits.

All I remember is two war films he took me to -

     ‘The Bridge over the River Kwai’, one was, and

‘The Battle of the River Plate’- but I get them confused

     when I try to remember beyond the gunfire.

And I remember the back of his neck in the Austin Seven

     scored and mapped, my mother said it was

the remains of an old carbuncle, left untreated

     because he was in the navy, he was all at sea.

His heart condition came, apparently, from the Anzio Landings

     when he, a non-combatant radio operator,

was given an empty rifle and told to run up the beach -

     plenty of gunfire then, which continued in his head.

And his whistling, sea shanties, perhaps, or maybe I was trying

     to find a form in the tunelessness, and the sea

was the only reference point. They called him ‘Shorty’

     because he was six-foot-two, thin as a spent shell-case.

I have photos, but his face is closed in sepia, browned

     with age. He had no friends, or if he did they were a secret,

lost at sea - as our old mahjong set almost was, on the way back

     from Hong Kong, ornate and severe, in an old biscuit box.

Maybe I have more memories than I think, or perhaps less.

     They rise and submerge, foggy, there and not there,

targets on a firing range, half-observed submarines

     crossing the sightless seascape of my remembrance.