Aviator

Do not discount

This feeling

Spilling from

Your heart

Let me

Hold space

I have time

Not requiring

Burden of proof

To know your stories

Are real

Ignore their

Whispering gossip

Discounting truths

Of life lived

Building, crafting, caring

Fighting for

Dignity and rights

Battles waged by

Fierce protagonists

In the prime of life

Hands strong from

Mining, lifting

Heart emboldened

By countless adventures

Yet I see you

Mind’s self shrinking

Made small

Being told

You’re no good

By fathers

Formed in molds

Not of their choosing

We shed strength

Like skin

Sloughing off

Layers browned by

Sunshine and hard work

Now, pale and soft

Fragile, scared

To say at the end

It could have been

So much better

Or just … different

Knowing alleviates fear

The wise understand

Power is an illusion

Last of the scales

To fall from eyes

Those bright ones

Who have seen

The whole world

And lived

Wholly in it

They who hold

All stories

Wait alone, in silence

Stuck in wheelchairs

Ready to be

Opened like a book

Glenn recounts how

He once crafted

Airplanes

Crashed two

Possessed six in total

No one

Believes him now

So he burned

His logbooks

Manuals handwritten

Aviation history

Through one man’s

Eyes lost, his

Grief palpable

I hear about

Airplanes a lot

I think I know

Why they tell me

About the times

They held dominion

Over earth and sky

For those

Brief periods

We all become

Birds who can

Fly away