Donal Mahoney

We were pilots of the dawn, launched
from our mother's womb screaming,
flying higher than we ever dreamt.

We sought to navigate the sky
and make the sun our prisoner.
It was just a sinkhole in the path

of everything we had to do.
Now, many decades later,
we've done everything we can

and glide like gulls, aimlessly.
One by one, our planes plummet
back to Earth without a warning

while the rest of us are slowly
running out of fuel.
There's nothing we can do.

We flew for years to get things done
and now it's time to tally up our score
but that's not part of our assignment.