An Elegy

At night time, they practiced the sorties

they’d fly over cities in Iraq,

Rehearsals to build expectations: they’d go and they’d come back.

The Somerset night sky was empty 

of fighters: the squadrons had gone now;

Behind them they’d left just the fear and the silence – like new snow.

The blinking red craft lights, and green, that

had embellished the north’s constellations,

Those consenting stars, were extinguished above both our nations.

The war’s prosecution, in chunter 

of cannon, in chatter of news,

Was forged in the desert’s one hundred and twenty degrees.

Beneath the bold headlines and under

the bellies of airborne crusaders

The grounds were ablaze but shed little light on the wherefores,

What missions of war were pursued, and

accomplished – or failed – or aborted.

The flyers came home who survived. Some were missing, the rest dead.