I found a beautiful little poem on the NPR Writers Almanac page (love. love. love. that page).
The poem for today is called “The Old Pilot”, and it’s by Donald Hall (read more here about the long life of this incredible poet).
“The Old Pilot” plays out like a small movie in my mind, I can smell it – see it – hear it – and it’s also like a film in that it has an interesting character at the center of it (the “old pilot” – who is he? What was his life?) There’s such detail (broken glass over the instruments, a biplane standing in the weeds – beautiful imagery) … it made me think of one of my favorite movies, Only Angels Have Wings (and how that movie, while – sure – a Hollywood movie with actors, etc. – actually made you smell the grease, the oil, the gasoline … you could smell the cigarette smoke in that canteen, you could feel the mugginess of that foggy night … It made those days of flying seem intimately real in a sensory way. You are inside the movie, instead of an observer, if that makes sense.)
Anyway, enjoy this mini-movie about an “old pilot”
The Old Pilot
He discovers himself on an old airfield.
He thinks he was there before,
but rain has washed out the lettering of a sign.
A single biplane, all struts and wires,
stands in the long grass and wildflowers.
He pulls himself into the narrow cockpit
although his muscles are stiff
and sits like an egg in a nest of canvas.
He sees that the machine gun has rusted.
The glass over the instruments
has broken, and the red arrows are gone
from his gas gauge and his altimeter.
When he looks up, his propeller is turning,
although no one was there to snap it.
He lets out the throttle. The engine catches
and the propeller spins into the wind.
He bumps over holes in the grass,
and he remembers to pull back on the stick.
He rises from the land in a high bounce
which gets higher, and suddenly he is flying again.
He feels the old fear, and rising over the fields
the old gratitude. In the distance, circling
in a beam of late sun like birds migrating,
there are the wings of a thousand biplanes.
THIS PEOM IS TTOALAY ABUOT ABROTIN!!!!!!11!!!!@1!!
/*hoping you remember your poetry troll.
The old pilot has passed away and in traveling to the other side experiences his journey through his passion for flying.
Beautiful
beth – hahaha yes.
Stupid me to not realize the Ball Turret Gunner was about abortion … putting your life into the hands of “the state”
JACKASS.
j swift –
Isn’t it gorgeous?
I love how he feels “the old fear” and “the old gratitude”, too.
This poem is what the author of “High Flight” would have written had he lived long enough.
I’m reading “Days on the Wing” right now by Willy Coppens, Belgium’s greatest ace (yes, Beligium was a real country once…). This is exactly the feeling that Willy describes in his memiors. The language used by those creatures of the Fin De Siecle was just fabulous and poetic.
I have, in my basement, a wooden propellor taken from a canvas Stearman biplane that my dad’s friend scratched up in a botched landing (that ended in a minor prop strike) while they were learning to fly. This poem immediately brought that prop to my mind’s eye: since my dad passed on about 15 years ago, poems like this always get me.
John –
wow. A beautiful comment. Thanks.
A few years ago, I read Eddie Rickenbacker’s “Fighting the Flying Circus,” and felt like I do hearing this poem. If you ever get a chance, take a ride up to the Rhinebeck Aerodrome (about an hour and fifteen minutes north of NYC). It is a real flying circus (and museum) with restored and replica biplanes. Their latest project is a copy of The Spirit of St. Louis built from the original plans and featuring parts from Lindbergh’s estate.