Without planning to, I avoided much of the 9/11 memorial noise this year, preoccupied with Visible Verse Festival programming and various other duties and distractions, though perhaps it didn’t escape my subconscious. I found myself writing this flight themed poem on the infamous date.

GHOST PILOT

Am I dead?
Yoke of command.
No turning back.
Navigating soup.
Procedures forsaken.

Rapid roll to the right
Betrays the horizon.
Wish I’d called in sick.
Voices swap, feel up
The ceiling, glow mortal.
No turbulence but peculiar

Buzzing in the cockpit. An
Undoing. Damn prop flies off!
Hole sliced into fuselage.
Explosive decompression.
Oxygen over. Fume of fog.

Monster called Hypoxia.
Am I dead?
I keep my head. Level my wings
Scroll hardened bush below.
Geriatric moose.
Anglers caught shooting.

Stronger than-ten-acres-of-garlic Electra
Crippled, stuck on full throttle.
Hips shaking, soon to rip apart.
High tail? Ditch?
Envision a long, northern runway.

Take the thing by the horns,
Steer, brute muscle mustered.
Stabilize this damn fossil.
Second pass. Last chance. Brace.
Touchdown. Kill the engines.
Committed. Hurtling.

No brakes, hydraulics. Adrenaline
Running, reduced to mere passenger.
Off the runway. Sweet
Burning. Foam the airplane.
We are not dead.