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.
