You know, there's lots of positives about this thing called blogging. I have favorite blogs that I visit each day, and all of them contribute a bit of "food for thought." I've learned to rely on certain folks, in making suggestions for movies, books, travel and recipes. From the very beginning, I found a reliable source in all such matters, from a lady who lives in an old Manor. In more recent times, I took her suggestion and purchased a book of poems by Donald Hall, titled White Apples And The Taste Of Stone. It came with a CD that was specially recorded by Hall with more than an hour of his favorite poems. Hall has a most distinctive sonorous voice and reads with a most unusual humorous style. I went on to watch him on YouTube, and found his poetry not only to my liking, but thinking him pure genius.
The Pilot Of 1918
He discovers himself on an old airfield. He thinks he was there before,
but rain has washed out the lettering of a sign. A single biplane, all
struts and wires,stands in the long grass and wildflowers.
He pulls himself into the narrow cockpit although his muscles are stiff
and sits like an egg in a nest of canvas. He sees that the machine gun has rusted. The glass over the instruments has broken, and the red arrows are gone
from his gas gauge and his altimeter.
When he looks up, his propeller is turning, although no one was there to snap it.
He lets out the throttle. The engine catches and the propeller spins into the wind. He bumps over holes in the grass, and he remembers to pull back on the
stick. He rises from the land in a high bounce which gets higher, and
suddenly he is flying again. He feels the old fear, and rising over the fields
the old gratitude. In the distance, circling in a beam of late sun like birds
migrating there are the wings of a thousand biplanes.~Donald Hall
