Jarrell When he washed out as a pilot at Sheppard Field They made him a PFC and sent him on to Tucson As a CNT operator Teaching a procession of new cadets how to navigate By shooting the stars from a mock fuselage Suspended inside a forty-foot tower So that for the rest of the war he never Had to fly outdoors, never come in Low over Ploesti, or contend With the flak or the fighters, "a very great Piece of luck for me," Jarrell said To his friend Tate, but he felt cheated All the same, lusting for some nightmares To call his own, even if He had to stitch them together with lies About death and grieving wives and burned cities That asked him Why, but that was okay too, Where was the harm, it got him a post At the Woman's College, didn't it? And who better To show those penny-loafer girls the Pleiades than he? But years later, as the leather and the fur In his make-believe dreams Took on the patina of mothballed B-l7's His hands began to tremble and he would Grab hold of the lectern, white-knuckled and afraid, Feeling the cables snap loose everywhere As he stared helplessly At the hydraulic fluid spilling from the lines And the prop running haywire With no way to feather it and the 109's Coming at him again and again Over Stuttgart Over Schweinfurt Over the Hand House in Chapel Hill Until he heard himself screaming From far away And went whirling through the bomb bay in his dark Wools and his dark gloves, no one left To tell it to but a legless aviator From another crew, outfitted with a pair Of brand new wings and waving His diploma with a sheepish grin, While deep within the celestial tower In a room as cold as the cirrus that hid the Jerries An assistant ME stripped off the old cadet's clothes And got ready to wash him out again With a hose James Lineberger |