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Now, I've never
pulled the lever
That would toss me through the sky.
Just a pilot
in a cockpit,
Crossed my heart and hoped to die
After landing
my demanding
Steel Junebug on her strip –
She won't stop shaking.
There's no braking
In this air: we'll take a dip.
This is tough, love:
there's so much of
You around me, sound machine –
Little flaps
and snaps,
Altimeter (that's falling
from the
green) –
and I'll miss you.
I would kiss you,
But I need this mask for breathing,
So I'm tightening it
(so frightened. shit.):
“Goodbye, my dear – I'm leaving”
Make s me bris tle –
this , this whistle (
That I used to hear just faintly
Th rough your chassis) –
now the blast
is
Overwhelming,
stormish,
saintly:
All is open.
Pull
a
rope
and
Bear
the
drag – the sheet I leaven
Coughs
“I've caught you”
While I watch you
splinter,
fire-streaked,
through
heaven
.
*Thank you, fansinaflashbulb.wordpress.com (1920s/40s parachute pictures) & Jess (orange from the Luminarium tree-room) for making this collage full.
ReplyDeleteI was reading, in DISCOVER magazine's review of science stories in 2012, about our world-record highest skydive – by Felix Baumgartner, from a balloon 24 miles above Roswell, New Mexico. Lots of cool information surrounding the story –
like how the designer of Mr. B's parachute system {Luke Aikins} had to build in an automatic rip cord that deploys if it senses a sustained high G-force spin: “It reduces the threat of redout, which is basically a stroke, in free fall.” Or how in the 60's, GE made a combination parachute/heat shield called MOOSE {man out of space, easiest} that would allow astronauts to bail out from orbit without the protection of a spaceship –
but what really caught me was this section: “During a 4 minute 20 second free fall, he became the first person to break the sound barrier without a plane. He also broke the record for highest skydive, set by his mentor, former test pilot Joseph Kittinger. In 1959 and 1960, when the Air Force was testing ejection seat technology in jet fighters, Kittinger made three jumps from the stratosphere to try a parachute optimized for high-altitude bail-outs.”
Can you imagine?
Flying through the stratosphere, tucked in an insulated cockpit, and then having your plane shudder and malfunction, and you have to leave that nest if you want to survive … and all of a sudden it's just you in the cold thin clear, falling? I can imagine so many overlapping sensations, from regret to fear to awe: thought it worth writing about
– 21 March 2013
As a pilot, this poem really captured my attention! It visually depicts the turbulent jerking, twisting, and twirling of falling out of the sky. In the beginning, the lines are fairly constant and have a definite rhyme scheme. As soon as the pilot "punches out," however, the lines become jumbled and sporadic, resembling the wild spinning of Felix Baumgartner's bullet-like fall to earth. When the pilot pulls the ripcord, deploying the parachute, the lines go back to their more compact, organized state. I also noticed the personification of both the parachute that exclaims, "I've caught you," and the aircraft, which seems to be the speaker's prized possession and even love, as suggested in the excerpt, "my demanding / steel junebug on her strip."
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