Mark E. Brotherton

ODE TO THE EIGHTH

The missions brought about adulthood,
Experiences of a Lifetime, the promise of death
You answered her call the mistress in red, white and blue
Flew on her issued wings, flew on her breath
Your comrades died in violet skies of aluminum and steel.
You drank too much and grew old too soon
You came to the mother country to destroy the fatherland
The tales have been told a thousand and one times
But the storytellers are leaving us and you’re in line
In a briefing room, of the mission in which no one returns
At the end of a life to which too much is owed,
But has she paid her debt, the mistress in red, white and blue
Would you go again I ask, knowing now what you know?
Should you have gone then, may be the best question
Do you remember? Of course you do
The flights of fury, the ride through hell
The return to the green and yellow carpet and the last bell
You the ones, the carrier of the torch
You were the children who rose in the early mist to carry forth the good fight
I walk those worn altars of East Anglia now
Made of concrete, abused by the plow
Each year they go little by little back into this ancient land
Rarely yielding the stories of the time in your hand.
Then in events marked by a calendar throughout she calls
Again, that mistress in red, white and blue
Reminding you that time is passing, the years left are few
You come again to return to the fields and walk among the ruins
To assure yourself it was you the warrior of years ago
The young offerings to appease the evil and to destroy its wicked ways
Children growing into the main players on history’s biggest aerial stage
To rise in the English mist and slay the vermin of far away
and hopefully return to rise again on another day
You never turned back; you went on without hate,
And history will see this as the ode to the Eighth.

©Copyright 2001 by Mark E. Brotherton