The Pilot

THE PILOT

by Lewis Turco

 

Calais, France, May 18, 1968 (AP) — Low tide yesterday uncovered a plane, presumably of World War II, with the remains of the pilot still at the controls. Its origin could not be determined immediately.

 

          It has been

a long flight. Like flak,

the seagrass exploded

beneath me as I fell

          out of light into

an older and a heavier air.

 

          My planing

continued in the tide.

When the scavengers had

done with my flesh, I found

          that still the stick would

answer, though more slowly than before.

 

          So I flew,

and am flying still, back

to the beginning. In

my marrow direction

          lay. Now the sea has

released me, and I have been constant.

 

          But I was

wrong. You see me at death's

controls, in the primal

mud where our flight began,

          but it has not been

a fleeing, as we have long supposed.

 

          I see that

now, with these sockets where

fish have swum. You, rising

from the shore, have shown me

          what the snail tried to

tell: the journey is the other way.

 

Turn me around. I am with you still.

 

"The Pilot" was originally published in The Saturday Review, lii:23, Jun. 7, 1969, and collected in Fearful Pleasures: The Complete Poems of Lewis Turco 1959-2007, Scottsdale, AZ: www.StarCloudPress.com, copyright © 2007, ISBN 978-1-932842-19-7, cloth; ISBN 978-1-932842-20-3, paper. Also available in a Kindle edition. All rights reserved: may not be reproduced anywhere for any reason without the written permission of the author, Lewis Turco.