You sit in the
cockpit still
upright in the
May Day position.
Hand on the
stick, pistol rusted, shoes too big.
The watch on
your wrist bones stopped.
Trees and
brush cling to the tangled fuselage.
Birds and
snakes inhabit the tail.
Where a shout
might have been
a gaping hole
in the calendar says
you are
seventy one years old.
Fifty years
you sat in the cockpit
your nosedive
buried, your war over and no one told you.
No one knew
where you went. You just sat there.
Skin rotted
off your once handsome face.
Insects ate
your flesh, everybody went home.
Your
sweetheart stopped crying
and became a
grandmother.
In this
monument to absurdity, insanity
and silence,
may you be in some sweet place
where if there
is such a thing
it was a good
war that you helped win.
God knows it
should have been.
May you be
with your new lover on a beach at sunrise
your arms stretched,
your chest to the East
free of this
endless killing, a rich smile
of famous
teeth, wisdom, money to go around.
May you know,
if only for an instant
a truth of
your dream.
Now, I step
across this world to your Indonesian grave
reach into the
cockpit and take your yellow bony hand in mine.
Your fragile
history crumbles.
Flecks of you
melt on my skin.
