Poetry Friday can be found with April Halprin Wayland at Teaching Authors! Enjoy!
It’s Veterans Day today. I am grateful to those in the past and
who now offer their lives to keep us safe. Some do not return, like my father in World War II. I am saddened when I see today that
children are still losing the sweet relationship of parent and child. Some veterans return to fight the other
war within themselves to regain the life they had. I hope for them in that terrible conflict.
John Gillespie Magee,
Jr. was an American aviator and poet who died as a result of a mid-air
collision during World War II. He
was serving in the Royal Canadian Air Force, which he joined before the United
States officially entered the war, as did my father. Here is the beginning of a poem
many of you may know; it was dear to my mother’s heart and is dear to mine.
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
The whole
poem can be found here.