National Poetry Month

Anzac Park

All parks have their monument. Its a stake in the heart
that tethers them or wards off subdivision.
In Itchy Park, the obelisk I’d almost forgotten
listed the names of the First World War. They were Our Part
but we picked the black lettering of their initials out
from the marble. The names followed much the same pattern
as our roll call at school, though some had been lost or forgotten.
We weren’t the first, it took others before us to start.

But there was a time when dad got us all up out of bed
to join the Anzac Service at Itchy Park.
Flags and uniforms, and in the half dark
a bugle sharp as a penknife gouging the dead
out of their silence and flinging them into the dawn.
The bugle wept. Itchy Park offered the names up, every one.

Thomas W. Shapcott