Grandpa

It just could be we inherited
The spaces into which you stared

Palpable, like clay,
Thumbed without touch into everyday

Objects: the cheap ceramic statuettes
Of English setters and other creatures

Frames yellowed by mists of tobacco
And all your various pipes

Arranged in parade beside
Paperback westerns and other pulp fictions

All glistened in the bathe
Of noon television or late night test pattern glare.

Under foreign trees, it was said,
You killed seven men

And buried your friends
In the mud,

By a creased and unknown
Uniformed man

In a chapel of empty chairs.
These things you take with you,

Conveyed to flame by automation
And polite sliding door

#NaPoWriMo 2014 poem number 6