I like to read "The Man in the Dead Machine."
I keep going from--
rather through extremes.
This is probably the way you'd kill a mouse with frustration,
is to move so fast from one thing to the other.
"The Man in the Dead Machine" is an airplane poem.
Airplane in it is a Grumman Hellcat,
which was a fighter in the Second World
War, flew for the navy off carriers,
fought in the Pacific.
"High on a slope in New Guinea, the Grumman Hellcat
lodges among bright vines as thick as arms.
In nineteen forty-two, the clenched hand of a pilot
glided it here where no one has ever been.
In the cockpit, the helmeted skeleton
sits upright, held by dry sinews at neck and shoulder,
and webbing that straps the pelvic cross to the cracked
leather of the seat, and the breastbone to the canvas
cover of the parachute.
Or say that the shrapnel missed him.
He flew back to the carrier, and every morning,
takes his chair, his pale hands on the black arms,
and sits upright, held by the firm webbing."