The Ring

(for Grandad)

I thought of everything your father had and couldn’t keep
In the wet clay of Ypres
In a secret pocket west of Flanders
It slept deep and safe like his southern commanders

And you sat on the North African sand
Toying with the circumference of that wedding band
Nervously pulling it back and forth over your knuckle
Then securing it safely back on your belt buckle

It survived three major conflicts to the best of my knowledge
But not me teaching sculpture at the community college
As my hands moved in the slip and the clay
It must have slid off my finger and drained away

I’m told I have your eyes and your widow’s peak
And that I have the same expression when I sleep
So I was gifted that gilded vow by your daughter and wife
In the hope I might to pass it on one day, life to life

I turn through the photographs of the Desert Rats
Trying to meet your eyes and find a match
But you are handsome and history and secure
I am all guilt and unsure and poor

Are we one and the same?
Were you with Keith Douglas in El-Alamein?
Did you point at him with your raised gun?
And say

‘What’s he fucking drawing now that strange poet one?’