The Survivors. (Revised).

The whistling of the kettle seems to indicate
That this lonely house is in fact my home
Not just a rickety, ramshackle concrete shell
Peopled by silent ghosts.

To counteract my loneliness I occupy my days
Contemplating images that my imagination creates
Deep inside the flick house that is my brain.
Nothing new materialises from my looking,

Every flickering image is just a memory
Viewed in such a way that it seems an original,
A polished fragment of my wishful thinking.
The more that I remember the sadder I become.

But it is not the dead folk that make me sad and wistful,
Their days are done, today is not their country,
They would be strangers in this lonely villa
That once they bought on spec, restored and furnished,

And quickly made their own.
It is the living folk that now I mourn, despair of,
Those who think that history is humbug,
Who would wreck my home to build a block of flats.

I belong here. I am a pensioner but I`m not selling.
My past cannot be pawned to bounty hunters.
This husk of a house is the story of who I am
Writ into wood and concrete with sorrow and with love.

The whistling of the kettle puts me at my ease.
I shall sit in my rocking chair and drink a cup of tea.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
June 3rd. - 7th. - 8th. 2019.
I was thinking of D Day Veterans when I revised this poem. Too often they are not treated with due respect by local councils and the state, but are fussed over by the media and politicians when a significant anniversary comes around.