Poetry Contest Entry
Artist - Phil Varner
© Phil Varner
In Memory Of ~Joseph Wright, USAF
(Inspired by the Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters.)
~By Turlough
All my life, my heart belonged to the turbulent stratosphere,
My soul longed for its home in forests of billowing clouds.
I ached to stretch my limbs so far and so high
That they would brush against the wings of angels...I longed, too, to serve my patriot desire,
To fulfill the honor of my family name;
To make high-held principles my own, forsaking self;
To maintain the never-ending regimen of duty,
That burden which keeps body, mind, and spirit strong,
Sharpens the senses, and ennobles the journey.So I set out, driven by the force of lofty passions,
Tempered with the armor of discipline,
To become a knight of the air, a sentinel of the sky,
Serving both my country and my inner call.Time and again, the heavens would shudder
At the roar of my craft's mighty vociferations.
On and on, duty and passion called me
To the front lines of some far-flung locale,
There to contend with unrelenting foes:
The tangible enemy, and my intangible fears.What was once a dream had become a vice,
And what was once merely obligation had turned to blind fury.
Both passion and duty were perverted; there seemed no way out
Of the futile cycle of combat,
The fearful summons to kill or be killed.Now, clouds seemed to be increasingly dark and foreboding,
For they were filled with the pungent smoke of conflict.
The ceaseless fire ignited the skies with a ghastly glow,
And filled the air with the shrieks of men, doomed to die
In the only place they wished to live.My soul, too, was crying out for a method to the madness,
A reason for such hellish holocaust in my beloved sky,
The Elysian Fields of my youth, the boundless expanse
Where my restless spirit once soared.Then, praise God, word came that I would be delivered from the inferno,
Once more to see the land of my birth, and ride the breezes above it.
But it was not to be; I lost my way among the raging battle-winds.
The metal wing that was to be my savior became my sepulcher.
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