Poem of the Week: 1969

For Ellison and Joe Craig

In the colour photograph
the family group
is heading into town
in their Sunday best.

Behind their steady walk
a soldier stares our way
and two lads look
at the rubble and ruin.

Was it a furniture shop
or the local bar, it’s hard
to tell; but the colour snap
has remained intact

since the long-lost summer
of Nineteen Sixty-Nine.
How strange is that?
Sunshine and a burnt-out shop,

all the folks getting by –
the soldier, the family circle.
(Was there something
else just out of shot?)

Life goes on amidst all the ruin:
the photographer’s snapped
this on such a perfect day.
What then? What then?

1969 is included in Gerald Dawe’s new collection Another Time: Poems 1978-2023 (The Gallery Press)