Smoke

(For Walter Dillam)

Everyone knew him as Jack.
He smoked sixty Pall Mall a day

on a good day, traded bootleg liquor
with the American airmen at Lakenheath –

nightly fleeced his cronies at dominoes. 
He showed us how to shuffle cards,

taught us the patter and subterfuge
of the mighty game of cribbage

        fifteen-two, fifteen-four,
        look all day, see no more

he would drive our mother half-crazy
whenever he visited. He called himself

the Old Crater, hinted obscurely
at war wounds. He would drift

towards his corner armchair –
low hanging, like a cyanic

stratocumulus – touting
some tall old tale, a twitch

to his lips, tiny diamonds of mirth
twinkling in the ashes of his eyes. 

This is the only photograph I have of my grandfather - with his wife, whom everyone knew as Bess - I think it was taken on their wedding day. When they met and married, they were living in the United States and neither of them had leave to remain, which I feel says a lot about those days and these.

You can tell from the photo they were having a gas, and that Bess knew what she was getting into and was very much up for the adventure. This is probably the first time either of them have made it onto the socials. Jack (Walter Frank, in fact, but he was having none of that) was always my most beloved grandparent and I shall let the poem speak for itself by way of tribute to him.

The poem was written early last year in response to a #PoemsAbout prompt on Bluesky from Alan Parry and The Broken Spine - thank you to them for the inspiration. I have revised it a couple of times since and hopefully sharpened it a little - and then thanks also to the good people at Atrium, Holly Magill and Claire Walker, this being now the third poem of mine that has been selected to appear on that platform.