When I was young and dumb and had ambition, I was a journalist riding in a C-141 StarLifter heavy with paratroopers.
One by one they filed past: cocky hand signs, rough, unasked for cigarette kisses, faith in fragile silk.
The engines dragon song, I watched so many maple seeds, youth and delight – I wept, wanting to go with them, knowing it was my duty to report what I had seen, tobacco, canvas, sweat, fuel harsh incense in my nostrils.
Alone, he towered over me, slim of build, narrow of hip, broad of shoulder, heels on the edge of the deck, back to the sun, silver lenses a mask, the Ace of Spades on the side of his helmet.
A crucifix against the sun, he fell backwards into the frigid sky, a whirl of playing cards, the ecstatic flash of platinum hair and sharp teeth as I, the unwilling psychonaut, fell through the shrieking void, gifts in my apron, none but myself to record the darkness, forty years later.