Sarah Watkinson
Oxford Stanza Two
Amabel remembers parting from Harry when he left her in Australia to go home and enlist.
The Charge on the Nucleus
I saw him last
in Sydney1.
The bow’s cliff shrank
to a cigarette-card ship
streaming smoke and flags.
I turned away.
Were there tree pipits2 in Gallipoli
in that dry gully?
We admired our wake
under new constellations.
The bigger the heart, the stronger the hold3.
© Sarah Watkinson, October 2015
1British Association Meeting, Australia 1914
2‘Parsons found tree pipit eggs in a tiny hole in a willow tree’, quoted from one of Harry Moseley’s boyhood letters
3′The atomic number of an element is proportional to the charge on the nucleus’ quoted from a scientific paper by Harry Moseley