This Is The Street

This was the street I grew up in,
where a quilt of rosy calf-deep snow
led me to a brazier; a tin hut
home to a blackened kettle, cracked cup,
and the kind of man you don’t find
anymore in tin huts in the street.
Wrinkling, with regulation crew cut
he remembered D-Day
and accepted his lot.
Nightwatchman sat
among the lanterns, made tea,
shared his fire, his solitude.
Home was just there;
I could see the curtain glow.
He had been that close to home once
and not made it.
This is the street I grew up in.