What Kind of a Name is Penelope?

Suffocating, said I needed some space, I’d go for a drive.
She’d come along too, she said, just for the ride.

I parked the car. We both walked for a while in blissful silence,
just the rush of the wind in the pines and the whine of a distant jet,
its spewed, smoky breath, indelibly etched on the evening sky.

She stirred up the leaves, with her white, spiky Nikes.
Drifted on the wind the sound of a lapwing
and the prompt, poignant cry of its mate.

“Bloody super sunset!” she shrieked,
her shrewish voice slicing through the half-light like a knife.

“Makes one glad to be alive,” she squawked, whirling round,
in her garish, red number from Lillywhites, so she said, of the Strand.

John Betjeman’s poem sprang to mind. Never mind Slough.
Come friendly bombs and fall on Penelope – right now.