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Contests : Tom Howard/John H. Reid Poetry Contest : Past Winners : 2006 : High Distinction
THE LEATHER SUITCASE
They don't
make suitcases
like that
any more.
Time was,
when voyage meant
train, steamship
distances unbridgeable
waiting for a thinning mail
weeks, then months,
then nothing
Time was,
when this case
was made
solid, leather,
heavy stitching
with protective edges
at the corners.
Children's train,
across the Reich
stops
and starts again...
Holland
a lighted gangplank,
night ferry to gray-misted
sea-gulled Harwich
again the rails
reaching flat across
East Anglia,
to London
in my bedroom
the suitcase,
a silent witness
with two labels
"Masaryk Station, Praha"
"Royal Scot, London-Glasgow"
Leather suitcase
from a far-off country,
Czechoslovakia,
containing all the love
parents could pack
for a five year old
off on a journey
for life.
*From the end of 1938 until the outbreak of War in September 1939,
about 10,000 mostly Jewish children, unaccompanied by parents or adults,
were brought from Nazi-controlled Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia
to Great Britain under the Kindertransport scheme.
But for the Kindertransport, few, if any, of these would have survived the War.
This poem won a High Distinction award in the 2006 Tom Howard/John H. Reid Poetry Contest sponsored by Tom Howard Books. Author Tom Berman received a $100 award. Winning Writers assists this contest. Copyright is reserved to the author.
About Tom Berman
Tom Berman has been a member of Kibbutz Amiad in the Upper Galilee, Israel for over 50 years. He grew up in Glasgow, Scotland, having arrived there aged 5 from Czechoslovakia with the Kindertransport in 1939. He is a scientist whose poetry has been published here and there, now and again, and was Editor in Chief of the annual Voices Israel Anthology from 2003 to 2006. Amazon.com is still trying to dispose of a book of his poems (Shards: A Handful of Verse). He is married with one wife, three daughters, seven granddaughters, one grandson and one dog.
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