Frost in a Pocket

It’s cold here in the rear turret,

flying high, over the channel,

bound for Holland and Germany;

confined, all by himself and with

somewhere else – he’d rather be.

 

Going out to check the pasture,

a farm boy away from Tennessee.

Going out to fetch the little calf,

that’s leaning against its mother:

his past life has become cut in half.

 

Only an hour now to the enemy coast,

so, cock the levers fire off some rounds,

for now is the time to test his guns,

and still it leans against the mother,

so young – she licks it with her tongue.

 

The first blossoms come over Utrecht,

then soon the escorts peel away,

as he goes to clean the pasture spring,

and turn the grass once after one:

mowing in the dew – before the sun.

 

Flying on, into the Reich skies

as fighters now arise like flies;

to torment, then staying to kill;

the dew has gone – his blade’s so keen,

as his twin fifties cut down the scene.

 

Trembling hands gripped ready to fight,

he’ll show them how his weapons work.

A speck – now rearing into sight,

coming now – racing in, he pulls

the triggers and death comes out.

 

The ship next to his gets a hit,

broken-winged spiralling down,

he prays for those trapped inside,

then remembers without a reason,

barrelled apples – picked in season

 

At the Essen marshalling yards,

they drop their load to fall beneath,

the weight gone they can now rise free;

banking for home, they could not see

cattle trucks – packed with refugees

 

On the home run the worst comes,

the crew being now tired and exhausted;

the one-o-nines and one-nineties,

incoming again and still again,

falling from the sky – like black rain.

 

Such a maelstrom of explosions

as bits of aircraft come falling,

past the line of his guns sights

a human body comes rolling

without a chute – holding its knees.

 

Sweat in his eyes, the cordite smell,

his arms aching but guns are his art:

designs of darkness to wrench and appal,

such things never meant to till the soil,

instead, human bodies – blown apart.

 

Fiery tongues of flame, explode

Through thin metal walls, a shard of

shrapnel cuts through into his chest,

he feels the wetness down his side,

gloved fingers probe his Mae West.

 

The com crackles from the front,

just checking that he’s still alive;

he knows his duty – he won’t be told,

his long scythe comes whispering down,

to lay the swale in nice, neat rows.

 

At last P-47’s come to save,

he can now rest back on his seat,

back where his life was in staying,

at an old house – renewed with paint,

inside it – a piano softly playing.

 

Below, the Dutch the coast recedes;

the sun is warm, but he is chill;

a dressing now staunching the bleed.

In his pocket, the little book he’d tucked

away, that with time he yet may read.

 

Sixty years on and he now recalls,

after reading most of the poems,

he’d swapped it for some tootsie rolls.

After that he guessed it just got lost,

but he’d liked the guy – Robert Frost.

 

This little book found me on a stall,

in a Norfolk village church hall.

His story may – or may not be true,

though being once in his pocket,

I only hope that he came through.

 

                               ©  D G Moody 2021