Today’s prompt is a revenant from 2016. I was to describe an object or place in a poem that ends with an abstract line.
My Bufferina
In the lower-deck belly
of the B-fifty-two-dee bomber,
two downward shooting ejection seats,
held two-thousand hours
of my youthful ass.
Whatever was bad outside—was worse inside,
oven hot in summers;
meat-locker,
freezing-cold in winters.
All jets, or airplanes, had the same putrid odor:
burned wire insulation, fried electronics, old dry puke,
and piss. Add oil and JP-4 jet fuel.
No shit!
Navigation and bombing, our job, done there.
Twelve-to-twenty-four-hour missions
(mixed with moments of stark terror);
we worked, wrote, drew, set-and-checked,
and double-checked;
we ate our meals sitting there,
sometimes
one napped during deadhead times,
a home where liquid oxygen was life,
and the noise—
literally deafening.
Service ceiling nine miles up,
nuclear
low-level missions
dodging hills, towers, cows,
and Nebraska farmers’ turkeys;
sweat and stink;
then, after debriefing,
it was beer-thirty time.
Happy Days was a great TV show.
Look both ways because perspective is everything.
Mind the gaps on the maps from when GPS was a dream
called, “what do you need me for, now?”
