Landings by Nick Pearson

They appeared to favour Brown Clee, the planes.
A Junkers 88 lost on its return from Liverpool,
bombed out, banking low, looking to pick up
the Severn’s thread for a way back down home;
or a Wellington out of High Ercall rehearsing
close to midnight its mission one last time.

Perhaps they imagined it softer than Titterstone’s
dhustone face, lunar beneath a moonless night -
softer for the thought of grass hollows pressed
with sheep or young, farmers’ daughters flushed
with the fug of beer and cigarettes in village halls
blacked out for the Tugford or Burwarton dance.

Though clearly they had no real choice, the crew.
Engines shot, blind and dropping, they gambled -
on level ground broadening below, birches clipping
the wings, the nose coming to rest in a barn’s loft;
a sudden beacon of flame lighting up the hill;
the rush of scarring turf, Boyne Water’s icy gulp.


Note

There is a modest memorial on the Brown Clee to the twenty three Allied and German airmen who died there in flying accidents during World War 2.