Missing
You were clearly there at the start
A living, breathing boy
The Victorian green certificate
Carefully inked in clerk’s neat copperplate
Hard evidence of your entry to the world
And again, newly brothered, at home with Mum and Dad
My unknown great-grandparents
The family names grouped
Rows and columns in the census
Together at century’s turn
And again, a decade later, I can clearly see your name
Stone-mason’s apprentice, just as your father had been
Young, strong, single, patriot to the cause of conflict
Caught up in the rush to enlist, marching away with the
Pals
And then you simply vanished from the face of the Earth
Somewhere in the French mud, if I were to hazard a guess
The service records destroyed, ironically lost in the later
Blitz
Never married, no death recorded
No longer there when you were needed
It became a dead-end wherever I looked
As if you had never existed
A missing branch of the family tree
But I can see the gaps in the photographs
Where you should have been standing
The gatherings you ought to have attended
The children you never had, the cousins you never
provided
And I can sometimes hear your voice
Filling gaps in conversations
In the folk-lore of family
I wish you’d been here to meet me when I made my own
entrance
For you’d already left long before I came
So I couldn’t reach out to touch you
It’s as if you’re still missing in action
And I’m touched by your absence
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