Air's Poetica: Explaining Poems And Why To My Deceased Father, A Pilot Poem by Warren Falcon

"To become ourselves we are these wayward things." - John Berryman


In a poem I unabashedly sing, I play/delight (as if in flight or free fall)in
the say of words as an array of voices.

Such may confuse or overwhelm
but I must say that I don't care (or at least not enough)since the muses

overtake a man and turn him songward "ever which a'way" as Carolina
mountain folks where I once lived do say.

Now I hear you in the plane cockpit shout CLEAR! then turns the prop.

You and I, a roaring boy beside you, veer toward runway's end, turn and
burn throttle full bore into eventual lift and air.

I realize now as an adult that you could breathe the better there, no doubt.

A spiritual asthmatic for 66 years now, for me, air's a struggle in both land and sky.

A poem, writing one, is where I breathe best.

Father,

Here's breath for you.