The branch appreciated the writing – which touches on Remembrance and offers a perspective on those who have lost loved ones in service.

Having had such a warm reception at Roslin, the poem is now being shared below.

 

Left Behind

 

The people stand with lowered head

Remembering the Glorious Dead

But what of those who’re left behind

Does that thought ever come to mind?

 

The widow who is left to stand

Is just a woman in our land

No one sees the grief she bears

Apart from Armistice, who cares?

 

On that bleak November Day

When the nation stops to say

Thanks to persons, past and gone

Consider those whose life goes on.

 

Do we consider their lifelong pain?

Or the thoughts that still remain

Of hopes and dreams all unfulfilled

Because a loved one has been killed?

 

Her life adapted by her need

Who helps? her children’s mouths to feed

Or to provide school after care

Or give to them the clothes they wear.

 

And as they grow where do they learn

The skill of parenthood as men

With only a mother on whom to call

Do they ever learn that skill at all?

 

Fatherless bairns. Are they aware?

Or do they think that life’s unfair

To leave them in a situation

Largely forgotten by the nation.

 

On foreign soil the gravestones stand

Fathers in a far-off land

The deeds they did, we need not copy

We remember, with a poppy.

 

As we watch the poppies whirl

What thought of mother, boy or girl?

Their tears for lost ones we can’t hide

We watch and call it National Pride.

 

When next the silence you observe

In memory of those who serve

Keep one thought within your mind

Mothers and children, left behind.

 

Then in those moments, when alone

As adults, do the thoughts they own

Today she may yet marry again

But that was less true way back when

Working for her children’s good

Her sacrifice, her husband’s blood.