This summer – the 75th Anniversary of the Battle of Britain – we have been treated to many sightings over Kent of the few remaining airworthy Spitfires, as they make their way to airshows and special events. I wanted to voice my own respect for this aircraft and those who flew it. I hope people get some sense of this from the following poem written over the month of August 2015.

Lone Knight (Spitfire over Kent)

What is it about you that makes me point and wave,
To rush to the open window with a child’s heart,
And hope that you will tip your wings to me alone,
As you make your gallant way?

Rolling over hills lined up like casks of warm ale.
High over the vale where ironed fields are laid
Like napkins at an ancient table,
Set for you to tell your hero’s tale.

For a moment, I lose you among puffed-cheeked clouds
That hang from the sky like washing from a line,
Among the swifts and swallows that swoop and dive.
But then your throaty song returns.

For this lone knight, no longer our chariot of fate,
Must continue on its way, for charity and the fete.
To thrill the crowds and cast its spell
To protect, to serve, to save the day again.

Simon Denegri, August 2015

I felt a tug, and then a pull
And like the spider’s good night’s work in the morning wind
The cotton thread on which I hang, is reeled back in.

What I thought was infinite,
Is finite. No more party streamers
Or ensigns on Ocean liners.

I know I am lucky
To have got this far without snag or break.
Yet I can’t help, I can’t help but wonder….

This cotton reel. My life.
If only I could make it run and run,
I have so much more to weave til i am done.

Simon Denegri
1 May 2015

I

I unhand it
To fly through space
And land upon the page.

To go
Where no words
Have gone before.

A soul
Where once flew,
An unmanned phrase.

Without
Purpose nor,
Life-giving punctuation

II

From mission control
I watch its flight.
Its path is true.

So many missions before
Have foundered,
Failed to return.

But every word slain,
Or laid to rest to date
Was not in vain nor misplaced.

The word is
At work
And the race is over.

IV

For this one,
This one will reach its orbit.

A rocket ship of ambition
Released from its berth

To be spied with wide-eyed
Imagination from earth.

One small word to you
One bold work to me.

I do not remember you as others do.
By entries past in monogrammed diaries
Or symbols, marks and numbers scored
On the calendar hanging aback the kitchen door.

I do not remember you as I should, some might say.
With framed photographs, or disciplined candles
Well worn toasts over warming wine
Or the recalling of your name to fill the time.

No, it is in the aching passage of the day –
The place setting foolishly laid, and the waiting bed
With white sheets tucked and made –
That I remember you.

Ordinary days
You made extraordinary.
Now emptied and made solitary.

But time will pass and it will be you that remembers me.
In the sun’s rays falling on my shoulders
Or the rain tapping at my window.

You will find me
And your memory will warm me
In the harshest climes.

I am sure of that
For we never did love each other as others do.

Stylus

You fell upon me,
A diamond-tipped stylus
On vinyl

And set me spinning
Inexorably.

You danced and then grooved,
Turning tables and heads.
My heart

Palpitating in
Anticipation.

In those opening bars,
I was sold on you
Only you

And by breakfast you’d gone
Platinum.

But now my jacket is torn
And well worn tracks
Scratched.

So we nuzzle close, and dust
Each other off

Before settling down to
Play our greatest hits again
As if it was

Only yesterday that they were
Freshly laid and pressed.

June 2014

The bunting droops
Like the lower lip of the fallen clown
And the litter froths
From the battered roadside bin.

Teenagers with jeans half-mast
Flag drunkenly for cabs
As neighbours soak up
One-off episodes of TV Soaps.

Gushing rain,
Waves of painters wash
Wiping livelihoods
And summer smiles away.

Subsides then stops
Leaving rivulets
Paths disappearing under sodden leaves,
Like dirty sheets being pulled down below.

Stick-on numbers fall
On headless mannequins
To the shop window floor
In front of crowds

Backs turned, stretching necks
To follow the passing parade
A glorious memory
Of fading ceremony.

March 2014

Haves over have-nots. Slow-moving 4×4, becoming gentrified for a time, backing west.  Occasionally cyclonic. Born and fled, dispossessed. Rough or very rough.  Strange voices. Poor.

January 2014

Let us make love in another language.

Let me pull at your heart strings with an American twang
Undress and discover you in conquering Portuguese.

Let me caress you lovingly in Latin American
Have designs on you in well-cut Italian.

I will show you I can do what the Cossacks do
On the Russian steppe and bareback at that.

Before tumbling efficiently in German
And cavorting in Croat.
But I might need to lie
In Swedish
On a mat
After that.

We could be perfunctorily Danish
Or make a meal of it in French.

Orientate ourselves in Japanese
Or make eyes in Icelandic.

Be blissfully Belgian
Satisfyingly Swiss
Even phlegmatically Flemish.

All I know
Is that the very thought of
Being taken like tapas in a Spanish bar
Or warmly wrapped in Mexican tortillas
Is enough to bring out the linguist
In me.

Just as long as it is you.

Mi amor.

By Simon Denegri
November 2013

So this is a poem I wrote a few years ago and have touched-up here and there since.  I did post it on another blog I started called ‘London Tails’ which never got going really.  Anyway, this was the beginning of a difficult time in my work life if I recall, and one day I realised I did nothing but walk with my head down.  The poem is me talking to myself as much as anything else, searching for optimism in everything around. And finding it to be honest.

Look Up, Not Down