It was the model spitfire in your front room window
That separated you from that tribe,
We call ‘the old’.

I saw you sometimes at the shops, your movements slow, deliberate,
Arthritic.
You carried a basket, the old-fashioned clumpy kind.
And you were always looking behind you. I thought it was the traffic
You feared, but now I know it was the Messerschmidt ME 262 that still had you in its sights.

Frank, you were too tough with the kids who gathered,
Smoking, talking, laughing, outside your front door.
They were only young. Though I expect
You had forgotten the mess and all that false bonhomie
Before a raid.

At your funeral, I sat at the back, you had family,
Few friends, I noticed. I thought.of your skin,
Safe within the coffin, now
No longer agony to move
Around in.
You told me once it took you two hours to get dressed.

At your funeral, I was transfixed by
That image of that naked Vietnamese girl fleeing napalm
Mixing with your burning descent through the air above
The South Downs as I whispered my goodbyes and cried.