High Flight

My father’s brother, Jonathan, died in the 80s at the age of 36. I don’t remember very much about his service (I was 8 or 9) but I do remember my father, brown-haired and glossy-eyed, wearing a dark suit, standing at the pulpit of the church and reading High Flight by John Magee. His voice was steady but full of emotion, and I recall like it was yesterday gazing up at my dad from the hard wooden pew next to Hilary. It was one of those moments that I felt like I was floating outside myself, watching, even as I experienced it. I had never heard High Flight before, but I’ve heard it many times since. And every single time, I’ve thought of Jonathan, who was a blue-eyed engineer, a passionate glider pilot who loved the skies and his two blond boys in equal measure.

Today, walking through the Shelburne Museum in the pouring rain, I was stopped dead in my tracks by a plaque bearing the names of soldiers lost in World War II and the words of High Flight. My voice caught in my throat as I paused and told Grace and Whit all that I remembered about Jonathan. In the most unexpected place (northern Vermont in the rain) I found myself thinking of my dad, and his brothers, and the ways that both the ocean and the sky can introduce us to divinity, and the way that tragedy can swoop down and alter our lives forever.

High Flight

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds – and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of – wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long delirious, burning blue,
I’ve topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew –
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untresspassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

– John Magee, 1941