Poetry

It's been a long time since I wrote in my blog but thought I would tonight and include two poems. the first one, Battle of Britain, as published in WA Poets online journal Creatrix 33. The second one Responsibility was read at my Come Write In meeting yesterday and received a lot o comments. It's made me think about a third one - Spitfires. Well why, you might ask. Because I have been very much in awe of the Battle of Britain that was fought by so few British and their allies against a very powerful and well-prepared foe! Two hundred and fifty fighters against 2000 of the enemy! I ask you - was not God's hand in this battle that Britain won it? This was a decisive part of the war that saw Germany beginning to lose it.

                 Battle of Britain

Mad scramble when the phone rings,

Pilots soon zoom into the air.

With roaring engines, mighty wings,

Leaving lethal death trails up there,

 

The tiny spitfires under pilots hand,

Fight for freedom, filling sky with flare.

Fighting accomplished, a pilot sings

Coming home on a wing and a prayer.

 

Daring-do pilot victory-rolls a craft,

Others belly landing after fight in the skies,

Bomb-cratered airfields they eyed, aghast,

While Trusting in God were Hamilton’s cries,

 

He prayed for radar to come after,

As tired pilots arrived home for tea.

200,000 dead, a quarter million aircraft,

Far too many shattered lives moaned he.

 

At the base the CO there waited,

Pencil-twiddling in his anxiety.

How many returned? With breath baited,

Was silent question in troubled piety?

 

He had to write letters, always letters

To the families waiting back home.

The COs job in a world in tatters,

Was his at that time, his alone.

Responsibility

The Captain, the Bombardier, the Navigator

What major roles they had to play

Who was the most important at times

Was rather difficult to say

 

Now the Captain, his word was law

To be obeyed when given at length

It was his responsibility for sure

His character shows that strength

 

He kept the Lancaster in the air

With skill he guided his charge

Gripping tightly through flak and bullets

Ready for bombardier to drop bombs at large

 

Then Bombardier takes full control

When the target gets ever nearer

To him the responsibility of his soul

To drop them precisely when vision is clearer

 

But Navigator plots the minutely course

For Captain needs to know where to fly

For Bombardier to drop his charges

Exactly on the land below that both require.

 

I guess there’s one more thing to say

About these gallant men of such flair

For involved were other actors at play

When the Lancasters took to the air

 

The daring-do crew received little note

Like the radio man at his work

But those gunners that kept their aircraft afloat

Zealously their bullets whizzed, they did not shirk

 

There you go, from captain down to gunner

The huge Lancaster braved the fighting enemy

Not one of them thought to do a runner

                                   As they faced their own Gethsemane