Armada by Brian Patten

Thank you Allan for being very quick off the mark with this superb Brian Patten poem. The first of many of your selections I hope....

ARMADA

Long long ago 
when everything I was told was believable 
and the little I knew was less limited than now, 
I stretched belly down on the grass beside a pond
and to the far bank launched a child’s armada.

A broken fortress of twigs, 
The paper-tissue sails of galleons, 
the water-logged branches of submarines – 
all came to ruin and were on flame
in that dusk-red pond. 
And you, mother, stood behind me, 
impatient to be going, 
old at twenty-three, alone,
thin overcoat flapping.

How closely the past shadows us. 
In a hospital a mile or so from that pond 
I kneel beside your bed and, closing my eyes, 
reach out across forty years to touch once more 
that pond’s cool surface, 
and it is your cool skin I’m touching; 
for as on a pond a child’s paper boat 
was blown out of reach 
by the smallest gust of wind, 
so too have you been blown out of reach 
by the smallest whisper of death, 
and a childhood memory is sharpened, 
and the heart burns as that armada burnt, 
long, long ago.

Brian Patten