‘Remember’: A New Haiku by Tracey Walsh

Personal effects
repatriated jumble
remains remaindered

Part of Long Exposure’s ‘Looking Back’ project for National Poetry Day.

Bio: Tracey Walsh has recently had work featured in Long Exposure. She tells us about the background to this poem:

Walter Walker (an uncle of my dad, also Walter Walker) enlisted in the army in 1915, aged 17 (he told them he was 19). He was killed in action in France on 14 April 1917. The image shows one of several documents, found when researching the family tree, that deal with the ‘admin’ of his death. Another form sent to his mother, Harriett, asked her to choose a personal inscription for his gravestone in the war cemetery in France (We Shall Meet Again).
Four of Harriett’s children served in the Great War. Walter’s brother, Edward, died a year to the day after him, 14 April 1918. He has no grave, personal effects or admin forms, just his name inscribed on a memorial stone at Loos, France.