Good Friday

No sun
squeezed through
the blinds this morning, instead
grey skies filled the transom windows
dampness settled on the deck
rain set in mid-morning –
it would be a muted, routine day

Morning email changed things
when
the message arrived
I waited to share whatever awaited
hoping one click would provide answers
bring closure

He was, of course,
long dead, out there, somewhere –
for more than forty years
an invisible string had bound these two
a small tug, a jerk that surfaced at odd times

It is a story all too familiar
in the context of time and place:
youth, war
a plane that never returns to home base

What else is there to know?
the plane would have
crashed, carrying to his death its young pilot

God and country is not all glory
there are also too many unspoken, and
unanswered questions

If we could know (that)
finally, wreckage had been found –
maybe we could re-write the story –
make somewhere a place that could be touched.
I wanted the good news –
what we got broke our hearts

“Do you remember that white plaque –
the one that hung on daddy’s office wall? It
honored another young pilot who had died.

They were both twenty-eight at the time.