Poetry – Dancing on shrapnel – a poem to my mother & the Second World War

Dancing on Shrapnel

My mum used to tell me about her life in the war. She would visit the Dance-Halls and dance with the American soldiers. It was the time of the Big Bands and the Yanks had money and were exciting. England was suffering. It was the blitz and London burned. Every night there would be bombing raids.

They’d come out of the Dance Hall and walk home so full of life, dancing down the street. The bombers would be droning overhead and the ack-ack would be firing, crumping fireworks in the sky.

Big Bertha was a large gun mounted on a railway cart so that it could be moved and not become targeted. It would pound away at the planes above.

All around them lumps of red-hot shrapnel would be falling. But they never put their tin helmets on. They were young and felt to be immune. In the morning they would find the whole road littered with chunks of metal fragments from the guns.

I could picture her spinning and skipping down the street, singing her head off, with all hell let lose above.

 

Dancing on Shrapnel

 

Young and frivolous

With nylons from the Yanks.

Dancing at the Playhouse

To the Big Band romance.

 

Carefree and laughing

Walking home in the pitch

Black crumping hell –

Dancing on shrapnel.

 

Twirling in the dark

As ‘Big Bertha’ barks

From the railway line

Doing fine.

Laughing to the sky

As the jagged fragments fly.

 

Invulnerable,

Immune,

Shielded by a lack of years.

Full of the sanctity

Of innocence

With no tears.

 

Skipping to a silent tune

To the fireworks in the sky

As the red hot metals fly.

Jitterbugging without a care

On an all-consuming high.

 

Giggling to a carefree tune;

Tin hat for sell,

While dancing on shrapnel.

 

Opher 14.11.2015