WEBVTT

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This is a poem called The
Biplane, which is one of those,

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I guess, World War
I planes that look

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like they're made
out of papier mache

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and don't look like
they could fly.

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The poem was written
under odd circumstances.

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My father told me about
a recurrent dream he'd

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had many times over the years.

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My father and I, by the way,
grew up in the same house.

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It was an old house
that his father

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had built in Massachusetts.

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And in the dream
a biplane landed

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in the neighbor's garden--
the neighbor's field.

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And he wondered
whether the dream

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had been a real experience,
when he had been very young

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and didn't really
remember it correctly.

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So he called a kid
who had grown up

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in the neighborhood with him.

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This was just a year ago or so.

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And the guy said, "Well,
the Radski's garden plot

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was just 20 square feet or so.

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No plane could have
landed in there."

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So my father, like everybody
else who doesn't write poetry,

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told me I should
write a poem about it.

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In the poem, I am having the
same dream my father has.

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The Biplane.

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"Sometimes the
night is not enough.

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I rise remembering,
and the dream

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is no longer a quaint
story in another's life,

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but my own, grown more real.

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Last night, a biplane landed
in my neighbor's field.

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I watched, from my window
seat, the canvas wings

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graze the rows of
corn and come to rest.

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Afternoons seem always time
between the crests of dream.

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There is an oak
outside my window.

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So stunted, its limbs
elbowing this way and that.

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It seems it had made a decision
not to grow beyond its needs.

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In spring, the leaves appear.

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In fall, they yellow and curl.

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And I know the constant
change in direction

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is a ruse to make
it seem more humble.

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Again last night, the biplane
landed in my neighbor's field.

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It caught fire.

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But when the wind
finally blew it out,

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I felt like the child who
snuffs the match in a closet

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and finds himself
alone and bodiless.

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Just think, I forgot
the dream today.

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I woke and drank my coffee,
washed, put on my clothes.

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On the way to work, I
stopped and turned back,

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but couldn't think what
it was I had forgotten.

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It was like biplane
from World War I--

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my father's war.

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Beyond the window, the
tree was waving its arms.

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A pilot from long ago, wearing
my father's cap and goggles,

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was waving his arms.

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Now I remember, it
was my father's dream.

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Told to me as a child, put on
like a coat that one day fits.

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I rise from my window
seat, remember the child

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who wanted never to grow up.

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The child has gone
and found his way."

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[APPLAUSE]

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