Poem - Thomas - Chest of Wings
With a Chest of Wings, Caliban in Blue
for Walt McDonald
As a child, he spent hours on end
staring into the cloudless blue skies
above Lubbock, watching for hawks
riding thermals, their talons clutched
like nooses pulled taut.
In hard winters, he studied hawks
frozen upright atop fence posts,
their talons sunk a half-inch deep in cedar,
eyes locked wide-open,
beaks parted with bubbles of bloody ice.
He spent hours on end
watching and studying hawks,
as if he knew he would crouch one day
strapped inside the fuselage of a fighter jet,
a fighter jet nothing but a hawk itself
with plumes of gleaming metal,
whooshing through the skies of enemies,
positioning itself for a dog fight;
as if he knew, with luck and God's good grace,
he'd make it home again
only to dream of those who didn't,
the unlucky ones parachuting to the clutches
of Charlie, buddies with the eyes of hawks
locked wide-open, riveted
to their trembling, helmeted skulls.
by Larry Thomas
from As If Light Actually Matters: New & Selected Poems
As heard on Texas Poets Podcast, October, 2015
