Amelia Redux 1937-2012:
A Pilot's Log

Solomon Sea

Virescent Huon Gulf
Flares
Like a canoe's splash board,
Notches shorelines,
Drowns coralline pinnacles,
Sequesters stoic crocs
In pellucid rift
Solomon Sea's tectonic plate
Ekes north,
Ballooning spiders and parachute seeds
Wheedle low cost fares,
Share prevailing winds; island hop
Nukumanu Atoll appears
890 miles out:
--Coral crust sphincter--
Mounds three feet 'bove water line,
--4 degrees, 53 minutes, south,
159 degrees, 06 minutes, east--
Lazes in brief equatorial dusk,
Then vanishes with night-fall
I steer 'liner leagues more,
To Nauru's phosphate isle,
Desolate tip sits high on surf,
Its 5000 candlepower quarry-lights,
--Visible for 34 miles--
Compete with star trails,
Blazon glowing aureole
On blacked-out sea,
Guidepost my northwest pivot
Toward Japanese forbidden
Harbors 

Moon beams buff
Electra's cowlings:
A hay moon,
But here a kelp moon
A buck moon,
But here a conch moon
I slide-open
Windshield pane,
Jettison items to nighttide:
Orange rinds,
Petrol-receipts,
Airmail envelopes,
Gas consumption graph,
Charts of lands by-passed,
Smelling-salts vial,
Motor specs,
Horlicks empty tin,
Eagle feathers,
Bread crusts
My night-sea crossing:
--A twenty-four hour,
Thirty-five hundred mile dash--
Demands every drop of fuel,
Excess ounces fritter
Gallons-away 

Truk Atoll

We descend from 10,000 feet,
Through frangipani 
And wood-smoke aromas,
--A deep elevator of fragrance--
Volcanic Never-Never Land
Appears in nocturne air 
Calcareous reef snares lagoon
Nemwes--South Seas maiden--
Once walked
Upon same sheltered waters,
She disobeyed her father,
Lost buoyant ways,
Drowned in grief 
My utility-bird
Speeds past mangroves,
Drops photo-flare
Aerial-cameras in fuselage,
Synchronize with brilliant flash
Silvery light spills across
Covert things:
Japanese warships moored
Off Fefan Island,
Munitions dumps,
Mortor emplacements,
Quonset huts
Eten Islet's sharapnel-shaped,
Its pandanus groves leveled
To construct runway
And turnaround 
I pitch argent flare at Dublon
"E7Ks" queue radial concourse,
Seaplane ramps, roadsteads,
Floating drydock,
Snarl 4th Fleet anchorage
I advance film,
Streak o'er Moen Isle,
Release my final flare:
"T" shaped concrete apron
Brands bomber field, 
Fuel tanks, gun revetments,
Hammerhead crane,
Dazzle 'neath my shutter's
Clinquant wake
I spot lighthouse
On Moen's lush headland,
Rotating beams sweep
Past crenulated walls,
Tag reef's north-east pass
Electra's supercharged engines
Hustle cab out of posse range
I look back through cockpit vent
To Truk's hydrosphere:
Shipwrecks, soon,
Will clutter ocean floor,
--Contain lost boys--
Anemones and gorgonian fans
Will garland rusting hulks,
Giant deck guns mired in shallows,
Will conspire with corals clinging shafts
To sprout lacey blooms 

Laura Stickney

photo of Amelia looking over extra fuel
tanks in fuselage of her Electra. 
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