4 Group, RAF Bomber Command

My mam laughs her infective laugh

when she talks about Kath

Eldest of six girls

biking to work in overalls

with ginger curls

They were Canadians, young boys

Filled Betty’s with their noise

Kathy washed their gore

from shattered Halifax

bomb-bay doors

Sixty-something years later

I worked for the son of a navigator

​whose stories curled my hair

Tales of self-preservation

in the air

Strapped their youth in those machines

Darker than the darkest dreams

where imaginings of derring do

were cannon-shells

out of the blue