My six-fifteen banks over the Rampart Range
Steeply, and as the cumuli derange

The campus appears, the parade ground,
Terrazzo and dorms only luckily found

From altitude when the chapel’s steel spires
Incandesce in early sun. But awe tires,

Like underclassmen kept up reciting
Speeches and the American Fighting

Man’s Code of Conduct, the boggling tallies
Of Luftwaffe aces, specs of what flies

And kills and sees like an owl or falcon
(stooping at how many knots?). Halcyon

Daydreams and memory are saving some
Down there from shame and a few to become

What they can’t yet guess, and when they kneel
To contemplate the cruciform steel

Blades they know as an airscrew they pray
Not for the smiting of the enemy

But as children in a homesick trance,
For mercy without talons, mothers’ hands.

This article appears in May 2025.

Reynolds Dixon’s work has appeared in the Iowa Review, Oxford American, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, TriQuarterly and other outlets.