Poetry, Part Three

I wrote three volumes of poetry before I stopped: SONS OF MEN, COMING OF NUCLEAR AGE, and NO SECOND SAIL. Volume One was primarily about my thoughts on the Vietnam War and mortality. Volume Two was mostly about my years in Minot and my thoughts about nuclear war and mortality. Volume Three was about my time at the Academy and the aftermath of my forced resignation. There was some overlap, to be sure.

When I was stationed at Minot AFB, I lived in the Bachelor Officer's Quarters (BOQ). I knew two officers then who claimed to be bisexual and with whom I had sex a few times over my four-year assignment. I was also friends with three pilots from the 5th Fighter Interceptor Squadron, the Spittin' Kittens. Roger, Tom, and Larry flew aged, twin-seater T-33 aircraft as targets for the squadron's aged F-106 Delta Dart interceptors. Arguably, the F-106's were the most beautiful fighter aircraft ever designed, the T-33's the most ungainly looking.

We were all stationed there at the height of the Cold War. We never knew for certain if any of our training exercises or active duty alerts might result in our going to total war. It all seemed unthinkable. But it was never an impossibility. We were young and in our prime of life, our 20's. Those years and our youth never to come again.

In 1978, I left Minot for Colorado. Roger, Tom, and Larry also left in the years soon thereafter. In the early 80's, while Roger was stationed in England, Tom was training to fly the F-15. One day I picked up the Colorado Springs paper and read that Tom had been killed in a training accident over Arizona.

Tom also loved the song by Simon and Garfunkel, The Only Living Boy in New York.

Eager To Fly

Thomas Worthington Brundige, IV
F-15 pilot and our friend

Fall is the wary promises
winter wearily disappoints.

And though we
are also temporarily assigned,
his flight surely grieves us
as our own.

He ejected into what we train
might be survival, might be safety;

escape is only a chance,

and a possible intercept,
so he kept ascending.

What matter the expense,
technology fails us,
and when it eludes,
we are all victims.

Like an Academy falcon
flown too far,
he exceeds that obscure horizon
where eyes and instruments cannot go.

But the mind succeeds after what is taken;
we land what the great blue stole;
as often as we want when we journey,
our time together and Tom enfold.

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