On Others Flying

On Others Flying

From here on the hill,
you can see planes fly low
over my house,
like visitors too afraid to knock
but shouting their messages
from above.
Helicopters
beat, beat, beating
their incessant morse code,
student fliers always
on the same trajectory,
air liners headed for
Logan International,
screaming as they throttle back.
On special days
we get historics,
World War 2 veterans,
churning the air
with droning propellers
and, sometimes, even
the latest jets,
F this and F that,
shrieking their white lines
across the sky.

For a moment there
I am taken back to Norfolk
in the old country,
where the A-10 Warthogs
swoop above the land,
engines grumbling in the rear,
so ugly they’re beautiful.
Or to my home town,
where the cargo hulks
drop down to land at Baginton
on the western plateau
and, as here,
old warriors take the skies again
to remind us of the Few.

I love that I have landed twice
between two airfields,
one a local strip
the other bustling international.
Others may resent
the noise and traffic,
a bit too low for comfort,
but not me.
I like the silvered emblems
of our adventure in the air,
the dreams of other lives
and places far away.
From here on the hill,
you can see planes fly low
over my house.

Line Count: 53
Notes:
Logan International Airport serves Boston.
The A-10 Warthog is the USA's most effective ground attack aircaraft. It is a very distinctive shape carrying its massive jet engines at the rear. Several attempts have been made to retire it but it has proved too useful to be replaced. The USAF has bases in the flat fields of Norfolk, England, from which they fly Warthogs.
Baginton is Coventry's local airport that handles a lot of freight flights and also houses an aircraft museum.
The Few refers to Winston Churchill's famous wartime speech referring to the RAF: "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few..."