The Pilot Spoke of Theatre Organs

Grandpa stretched like wire from Irish soil and seed.

He strapped luck and wings across his chest, wove his plane through

orange beams, underneath the golden bridge, over screaming sea.

He danced with God and Geisha, ferried fire over roiling blue,

Virginia dirt still damp beneath his fingernails.

He kept an orange T-shirt stuffed into his pack.

He moved his sons from Jersey, bathed his family

with Midwestern rust, let his lungs like ash grow black.

He packed his wife and favorite cat into a brand new van.

They drove for years, stopped in empty Cleveland theatres,

wiped the dust from pipes of ancient, rotting organs,

thrumming chords and classic meter, all to fight Tinnitus.

When notes began to scrape, Grandpa flew out west,

facing sun, a pool of blood inside his blooming chest.