Sunday, June 05, 2011

Memorial Day, 2011

Memorial Day, twenty-eleven
the army airman, fighter pilot
and later race-car driver,
later still creator of the Fitch sports car,
to this day owner of the single prototype
curve-graced Italian open two-seater,
arrived at the parade
to pick up his compatriot,
fifteenth air force b-seventeen
bomber pilot out of Foggia
who until last year had always insisted on walking,
only to learn
from the man’s wife he had died
six months before.
The airman hadn’t known – he’d been away.
He grew quiet,
stared off into space.
He didn’t drive the car,
the widow and bomber’s daughter-in-law
told their son
over breakfast some days later.
She told me about it a couple days ago,
she said. Probably didn’t want
you guys weighed down by it.
Unusual to miss the parade,
but they’d been in Toronto…
Niagara in fact, that day, swept up
as one should be
by the great, life-giving waters.

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