Canvas Moths Poem by M S Latter

Life and death grasped
so firmly in his skinny hands;
but in the lad's red-rimmed eyes
glimmers only death.

Dawn burns behind skeleton trees
pointing to the sky of awe -
that terrible yet irresistible sky

where canvas moths orbit,
ignite and fall.
Our flimsy biplanes
dance like moths,
sting as wasps
and burn like touch-paper.

Streaming past
below our wings,
the craters and trenches and poison gas
offer this air-war an insane sense of purpose,
perhaps even glory. Stalking through murky forests
of rain, resolve and marksmanship separate
the hunters from their prey; skill and guile
the only armour. Another notch on the wing strut,
another young son spirals down -
prisoner of his glowing cocoon.

The silk canopy is banned - parachutes
withheld from frightened young men:
'They must not jump from battle! '
We fight until death,
be it by bullet or fire, or if lucky
we land, and once more fight ourselves
through the night of terrors. Sparkles of sunfire
from burnished metal and polished glass. The sky of ice
split by hammering guns, seared with tracer bullets -
ripped canvas, pierced leather - a bleeding friend
gone in a petrol explosion. The hooded enemy
and the din of his thrashing steel
pursues relentlessly from cloud to cloud -
and in the propeller breeze
the screams of the dying are carried silently to eternity.