He spent his life escaping the limits of earth;
Life to its full freedom could not be lived land-bound.
He rode the twilight in his killer-shark spitfire,
Its hunter’s head and fin in flying silhouette.
He saw the familiar as if for the first time:
A pillar of trees in a drilled wedge of ploughed field,
An arc of ruffled water rushing by a mill,
The snow on ridges showing the rib-cage of earth,
A vast tide of crashing fields rolling on a plain,
Where owls raked the shadows when the mice and voles ran;
Once, he gently wing-tipped a doodlebug off-course.
Once, he bailed out, his plane on fire, his nerve near gone.
Above the hill-tops below the moon of morning,
Wild vapour trails bent on death swept across the blue.
Fighters and bombers in sheer violent counterpoint.
Suddenly a black smoke trail dove towards the river.
Everyone scanned the clouds expecting fire to fall.
They searched for the white flowers of floating parachutes.
Fear froze life fixed frost-fast in a fragile moment;
Dead, he returned to the vast empty space of clay.
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