{"id":2810,"date":"2005-04-13T12:48:51","date_gmt":"2005-04-13T16:48:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=2810"},"modified":"2010-07-12T19:05:36","modified_gmt":"2010-07-12T23:05:36","slug":"the-old-pilot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=2810","title":{"rendered":"“The Old Pilot”"},"content":{"rendered":"

I found a beautiful little poem on the NPR Writers Almanac<\/a> page (love. love. love. that page).<\/p>\n

The poem for today is called “The Old Pilot”, and it’s by Donald Hall (read more here <\/a>about the long life of this incredible poet).<\/p>\n

“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<\/a><\/i> (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<\/i> the movie, instead of an observer, if that makes sense.)<\/p>\n

Anyway, enjoy this mini-movie about an “old pilot”<\/p>\n

The Old Pilot<\/b>
\nHe discovers himself on an old airfield.
\nHe thinks he was there before,
\nbut rain has washed out the lettering of a sign.
\nA single biplane, all struts and wires,
\nstands in the long grass and wildflowers.
\nHe pulls himself into the narrow cockpit
\nalthough his muscles are stiff
\nand sits like an egg in a nest of canvas.
\nHe sees that the machine gun has rusted.
\nThe glass over the instruments
\nhas broken, and the red arrows are gone
\nfrom his gas gauge and his altimeter.
\nWhen he looks up, his propeller is turning,
\nalthough no one was there to snap it.
\nHe lets out the throttle. The engine catches
\nand the propeller spins into the wind.
\nHe bumps over holes in the grass,
\nand he remembers to pull back on the stick.
\nHe rises from the land in a high bounce
\nwhich gets higher, and suddenly he is flying again.
\nHe feels the old fear, and rising over the fields
\nthe old gratitude. In the distance, circling
\nin a beam of late sun like birds migrating,
\nthere are the wings of a thousand biplanes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9],"tags":[160],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2810"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2810"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2810\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18646,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2810\/revisions\/18646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}