Boy Grandad

Sprocket, Pickle, Squiggle. 

Only son: Pet Lamb, Boy-san. 

Joe, Danny Boy, Sammy, Matt-Matt, Tom – 

little tykes, little pests, put that down, 

let’s you and I have a word. 

What to do with all these boys, 

these conker-swingers, football-flingers 

these cannonballs, 

these loungers and lopers, 

underfoot then overhead, 

how to keep track of their sproutings and stretchings, 

when names have always been a trial? 

Think of them as a cubism 

of the boy who put his toy trains 

in the Morrison shelter, throwing himself 

on the mercy of the Blitz. 

Cover jaws, foreheads, noses 

in the photo albums; 

disregard the Arsenal T-shirts, 

and they are indistinguishable. 

We are getting to know Boy Grandad. 

The six-year-old sent to school 

on a different continent, 

so desolate that decades on, 

something in a photo snagged 

at a receding memory: 

‘He looks so sad.’ 

He sheds the years with his cotton-wool hair, 

reprising his crown of white fluff. 

He pokes out his tongue 

at the food he doesn’t like; 

needs help with his shoelaces 

and his hearing aids.

He and Boy-san are crossing over. 

Sometimes the photos are of them both.