Limped out of the hot sky a hurt plane, <br />Held off, held off, whirring pretty pigeon, <br />Hit then and scuttled to a crooked stop. <br />The stranger pilot who emerged—this was the seashore, <br />War came suddenly here—talked to the still mechanics <br />Who nodded gravely. Flak had done it, he said, <br />From an enemy ship attacked. <br /> They wheeled it with love <br />Into the dark hangar’s mouth and tended it. <br />Coffee and cake for the pilot then who sat alone <br />In the restaurant, reading the numbered sheets <br />That tell about weather. <br /> After, toward dusk, <br />Mended the stranger plane went back to the sky. <br />His curly-headed picture, and mother’s and medal’s pictures <br />Were all we knew of him after he rose again, <br />Those few electric jewels against the moth and whining sky.<br /><br />William Morris Meredith Jr.<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/navy-field/
