MEMORY

is the theme of National Poetry Day. Here's my effort.

We watched a plane pass overhead.
Mum said "Remember when the German plane
crashed in the Fells, and my brother organised a search party?
We were only children."

We used to catch each other's eyes when she began,
and say "I remember when you told me that before."
Suppress a smile, impatient,
wrapped in the immediacy of our lives,
too close to our own childhoods to think of looking back.
Hearing but not listening to their reminiscences,
our aunts and uncles who'd laugh
and feel themselves again in that not-so-distant time and place.

But now only she is left with her memories
like fading trails in the sky which
I must hear and share and not forget.