Best of the best, they were still laid to rest
made blind by dirt, muted by boxes
under flags as flat as death they landed.
They soared higher into thinnest blue
and flew farther than continents of winds.

Unlike merest men fastened to mud and dust
who never ascended, never cleared the limits
above trees and hills, those places of birth;
unlike birds with theirs on their backs,
these fliers had wings pinned on their chests.
Though risen from dust, they sped the air.
The force that pressed them, thrust not gravity.

They shouldered no weight, and
their feet knew relief in the wind.
To pull and roll and guide their pitch, they
squinted through light, haze, and blackness.
Better than mortals they left the earth
and touched the windows of the gods.

They flew into the flame of the sky
burned with metal and glass, bombs
and guns. They held throttle and stick,
though they stalled and fell like mad stones
back earthward, toward graves rutted from dirt.
They learned to control wings and fear
then roared again skyward like the phoenix.
Suffocate, burn, crash, freeze, drown:
all earth reached to tear them down,
and each element held a vendetta
against their audacity to fly.

From the earth the fires burst, craters
and billows of smoke, the air heaved
like the final breath. Though flak
tore fuselage and shrapnel bled the flesh,
they would not stop from piloting
for no grounded power removed their wings.
Never will they not have touched heaven.