(no subject)

[bigmatthews]

Dear Belle,

I saw you on the picture tube
As I sat, relaxed, last night
Again, after several performances.
You carried through your mission
In your usual graceful charm, you beautiful thing.
Then I remembered,
That day, ten years before.
When I peered inside you
Fifty years after your war.

Those ten brave men,
Fifty years later, replaced by actors
Live again in your restored beauty.
Your bombardier would later escape
The sinking Titanic.
Your tail-gunner would later become
The crooning idol of teenagers.
And I see myself as
The Irishman in your radio room.

But there you lie still
Coaxed around the States.
By others, who in their time
May have dated your sisters.
But you’re not jealous or defensive.
You know most of them are dead and gone
And are grateful to be around.
As am I, who remember you
And wish to see you again.

For fifty years later
And ten years before now.
I walked that same path
As ten brave men over Germany.
But you were simply parked
On the tarmac of Tallahassee.
Oh! What I would not give
To fly, to fight, to live, maybe die,
In that same cloudless sky, as ten brave men