Beneath the Wings of Eagles [Poem]

The following poem was forwarded by XOPA member Manny Sousa:

Beneath the Wings of Eagles
 
As I listened to the throaty, airborne rumble of my rivet-winged, flying antique war bird, which had carried so many thousands before me toward the roofless flaming factories of the Nazi Ruhr and the Furher's burning bunker in Berlin, I scanned from eagle eyre-heights the roads and fields that quilted the passing countryside below;
 
and I thought as I skirted the sunrise-gilded edges
of propeller-stirred clouds awakened by my passing
unobserved by those with downcast eyes below,
that somewhere underneath my iron eagle's outstretched wings
two souls woke up with love they'd only found
half-way through the moon-lit night before;
 
and that in the drowsy valley being side-lit
by the slanted, misty rays of breaking dawn,
a wrinkle-faced arrival with tiny, clenching fists
awoke on this planet to find her umbilical severed,
and was crying squinty-eyed at her first sunrise;
 
that beyond the hills still slumbering in shadow,
a warrior with care-wrinkled brow and clenched, arthritic hands
had dropped his rusty sword and left his dented shield behind,
squinting at the first light of the beckoning, pre-dawn glow
with a last, deep, raspy-throated, fading sigh,
and was flying toward a rendezvous himself
with long-lost comrades in a far-found Land
where he would cry no more.
 
Then I passed above old dusty roads that led
past places you once lived, and love was lost;
and my soul veered back toward memories of that world
beyond the breach of time and old regrets --
on wings your yawning smile had first unfurled --
to brush your hair aside as you awoke,
 
then vanish like a curling wisp
of fading incense smoke....
 
LtCdr Engine Eddie, airborne in an antique World War II fighter plane
over the Ocala National Forest en route to the Carolinas on 25 April 2008