Tracking Colonel Gaddafi
You weren’t in a war zone.
You had it easy when oranges and olives
hung in the ripening sun, groves carrying their fragrance for miles, oak casks of
Amontillado musty with sugar
discovered by Columbus
inspected by Edgar Allen Poe,
imbibed by sailors hustling
German blondes and ardor from South Briton. You had it easy
when Dickey saluted
the deck officer, and air turbine motors
whined like scolded children,
plane handlers unchained a Tomcat
sitting on the waistdeck like Prometheus.
You had it easy when gasoline
reeked your flight suit and they steamed up the catapults, or do you roll off the deck crushed,
a display of infanticide akin to
Cronus devouring his children?
You had it easy when compression sucked your breath, a stream of motion rolled your head, the tip of the carrier whizzed out from under the landing gear
and Elint men activated Doppler radars,
recorders, the multi band,
Dickey pulled every lever, twitched every instrument counteracting every sea-toward dip,
your airborne leviathan skimming the waves, lifts, banks hard, spins, and you pull G’s
on track and gliding,
above the West Mediterreanean on a tether of its own,
separate and distinct from the city on the hill,
the city lights of Ferlinghetti,
the city below.
