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Frank

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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, I thought, I was wrong.

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  it was the Messerschmit 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 inside the coffin, now

No longer agony to move

Around in.

You told me once it took you two hours to get dressed.

 

Transfixed by

The image of the naked Vietnamese girl fleeing napalm

Mixing with your burning descent through the air above

The South Downs, I whispered my goodbyes. 

◄ A London view

Words you remember ►

Comments

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Harry O'Neill

Fri 7th Feb 2014 22:15


Good all round, and that:

`I thought of your skin,

Safe inside the coffin, now

No longer agony to move

Around in.`

very impressive indeed.

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Starfish

Fri 7th Feb 2014 19:32

This is wonderfully poignant and observant.

<Deleted User> (6895)

Wed 5th Feb 2014 19:23

excellent piece.xx

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M.C. Newberry

Wed 5th Feb 2014 15:33

Sharp and poignant - with the painful realisation
brought home in the final lines of the story
behind the "movements, slow, deliberate".

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