Flat deck upon the flow of currents sub
Marine transfixed between behemoth’s lair
Below and gull bird paradise above
A face supporting fuselages sleek
But folded, clipped, and crowded to the edge
With tails and tips suspended ‘bove the sheer
And empty drop: row on row exposure
To wave-driving winds and threat’ning black banks
But cabled through it all that none upturn
While braving rain and blast and none are worse
For wear but washed with trial and tension to the iron
Anchoring their great frames to the surface
Where no amount of pitch or yaw will overcome
But all return to level lines again

Green the light forthcoming from the tower
Pilots scramble between the folded wings
Helmets in pachinko motion moving as
Crews both ground and air prepare for take off.
Noses turn to hooks of fourwheeled servants
Pulling out of sleep the flame filled engines
Stirring with the first turns of the secret
Spark no one has seen or can see but plays
The essential part in mandmade engines
Even as another spark stirs dreams to
Ruminate in captain, wingman, and rogue
While batons of orange marshalers guide
Gray birds to launching lanes where no clipped wings
Forbid it but all is Ready, Set, Go

The marshall bends his knee. Roar, roar, roar, roar.

Batons point. Brakes lift. “Roll, baby, roll.” Up
Into another world, the first recedes
While body sinks in cockpit careening
Yet in perfect peace are hands, feet, visor
Crowning head supplied with earth’s oxygen
While in heavenly air now bathing, breath
In rhythm, tandem motion with the fire
Entrusted to him as he leans, careens
Tears open air’s ethereal edges
Opening new possibilities one
Wound away from attaining, one dogfight
Away with foes camouflaged behind friends
And enemies. New spaces. New Graces.
“Fly, my Hero, fly!” An open heaven
behind him now with tipping wing he
Lands abruptly after descending, hov’ring
Halting, clamb’ring out of sleeping pow’r
To relieve the thirst that airborne battles
Bring. A debrief with commander who is
Also rudder, shaft, and keel—to hear the well done
In his eyes and feel the gold refined by
Fire on the shoulders, forehead, and heart
Preparing for the next and future flight.
Now the honor. Now the rest. Both have met.

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