My Childhood Memories
My Childhood Memories
In Coventry – on top of a hill
The rumble of caterpillar tanks,
The strange grinding mill
Makes line on the tarmac flanks
The sound of the hooter, the sound of the plane
The sound of the shooter, the sound of the rain
I grew up in this place with the excitement of war,
My dad wanted peace to fashion wood with a saw
Grayswood on the hill there were not many trees
Just a long row of shops – with ration books you got cheese.
To protect form the bombs the Andersen was under the table,
Or the pill box outside was cramped like a stable
This was the world at our front door,
Out back in the garden was a fantasy store.
In front of the house the bombs really dropped
At the back of the house the Indians were stopped
Amid the rhubarb and apple trees on broom-handled horses
We galloped with ease til the cowboys joined forces
Ity seemed to me that I didn’t fit
In the front of the house where the warriors sit
In the gun turret as the arms went by
And holes in the road where dead bodies lie.
Inside the house too, it was full of strife,
But to us children ‘out back’ was a different life
So memories fade as they always will
Is it peace we remember or war force still?
Written in 1993 by Sandy Chapman (the first poem I wrote)