Swarm

My mother’s brother, the Spitfire pilot, vanished

over the English Channel at the outset

of the war. An airfield in Kent, close by

green farmland on the edge of a cliff, wet

with dew; the howling engines, and a sky

crowded with menace: he climbed with polished

boots and pressed uniform over the wing,

and waved from his cockpit. The streamlined plane

swept down the runway, and rose in the air.

It did not return. We are uncertain,

still, as to its fate, and as to where,

if it landed, he was killed. Yet the King

invited my mother’s family to attend

a function at the Palace in honour

of those servicemen “Missing Presumed Dead”.

There remained doubt, at least for my mother,

after the ceremony, where courtiers led

in the princess soon to be Queen. The end

of the century came, and my mother grew

old with her uncertainty, living to tell

stories to her grandchildren which allowed

the suggestion that her brother was still

alive; one child would tease her, among the crowd

at the shopping centre, or in the queue

at the cinema, pointing to each

elderly man and asking her, “Granny,

is that your brother?” But he had not grown

old: the favoured son, handsome, funny,

gifted at games, would never be known

by generations who lay beyond his reach.

His Spitfire banked above the patchwork land

where farmers with pitchforks ran from a barn

to surround a crash-landed plane; it sloped

into clouds like woollen scarves, their yarn

unravelling. If his family hoped

he might survive, such hope was misplaced. A hand

that gestured from behind a perspex pane

was the last anyone on the ground saw

of him; he flew into myth, like many

others lost in that devouring war.

His last day was warm, windless and sunny.

Debris falling from the white clouds like rain.

Jamie Grant