In remembrance of them

Now no more than a track - long unused,
the marks left by the tyres almost obscured,
then past the barns, now unroofed,
their bare, ruined beams stark against the sunset,
the murmuration the only sound.

Where once the road led to danger,
the entrance to the wide open sky
filled with balloons
the ack-ack guns, stark against the sunset,
the engines the only sound.

And where the bindweed grows among the ruins
there he once stood, proud and tall
shading his eyes against the sun,
looking back to see you,
the symbol - and the Hope.

The passion ignited, blazing like yours for me
and for him, our lives interlocked
like our limbs as we lay, spent but happy
in those lost, lazy summer afternoons
as the planes flew overhead.

Turning over the debris with my stick,
pieces of fractured metal, shattered glass.
remnants of the broken lives
and the lost loves of
all our yesteryears.

Yet I am not here to mourn
but to remember with gratitude
what was once done here, for all
in this all but forgotten corner
that will be forever England- and now.