Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
As Lois mentioned, I became a pilot recently.
It seems like it took forever.
And although I wrote a prose book about it,
there was a certain amount of creative overspill.
And I thought I would read you one of the poems about flying.
This is about Lindbergh.
And if you know about the man's life,
this is about the young Lindbergh.
This is not about the fascist that he became later
in his life.
This is about the man, just rhapsodic and full of wonder,
who could fly across the ocean looking
at most of his controls reflected
in a lady's compact mirror.
He was one of the first people to fly the mails
across country.
And as a result, he flew in poor weather
and also in very poor aircraft.
And I think actually abandoned planes 10 or 12 or 15 times.
Let them go on and crash while he parachuted to the ground.
He was one of the first people to fully explore
the use of parachutes.
"Lindbergh."
"Half his life, he parachuted from open cockpits
in swamp fog, and the other, madly scouted
for where forced landings might work.
It was a tic.
His mind painting crashes as he flew,
knowing pilots lived only an average 900 hours aloft,
while at the same time eagerly eyeing the stagnant autumn
of the fields.
The village life which, as a farm boy, he knew from the soil
up, to invisible rivers and culverts of air.
Lost, he'd buzz a country to see what language the store
signs spoke, then reclimb the stairs of flight
to where he loved being a hermit in a wooden cabin
in the clouds.
He always carried a Minnesota boyhood with him.
That frozen winter quiet, so raw, he felt a trespasser.
The ocean glaring white and inhuman far below
with enormous cakes of jammed ice
as he steered alone by a compass reflected in a lady's compact.
He figured plane and heart would never quit.
How can a whirlwind stall?
Never feared the wind streaming at tornado speed
over fuselage and wing.
Nor the silk he would blossom to the ground in so often
as if rehearsing a final cocoon.
Above all, there was no mystery to life's deepest thrill.
The stick vibrant in his hand, a quart of stagger in the engine,
death stowed away in every bolt and copper wire.
All existence reaching from one horizon to the next.
Spangled, perilous, interflowing, dumb.
In the same instant, supreme and completely without value.
Hung on nothing, a few valves and a strut."