Elektra Falling

DOT DOT DOT DASH DASH DASH DOT DOT DOT

The void stretches from here until tomorrow,

And she believed she had a place there;

Like Icarus rising on golden, feathered limbs,

For Amelia, the icy altitudes were mountains for climbing;

Second star to the left and right on till morning,

And she would find success in that dawning.

How could she know her final flight

Would be swallowed up by endless night;

Her fame and fate ransomed by a sky

Uncaring and cruel to those who dared fly?

A figure of flesh made myth, and history's heroine

Was pressed between newsreel and paper;

A ghost of aviation.

She was the tomboy in a fragile box-cart

Smashing off the top of her parents shed, her heart

Belly-slamming with the urge for elevation, a liberation;

A homemade ramp, a roller coaster ride and she was high,

Higher than that old rust and wire flivver she saw in Iowa,

An ache, an urge, unacknowledged, fulfilled, such a sensation!

The rise, then the fall; the world tumbling, seeing it all

Crawling from the broken box with a torn dress and split lip;

Hollering to her sis: 'It was like flying from the hip.'

She would always fumble her touch downs;

Some wag said once she had all the airless grace

Of a flying cow doing splits, hitting the ground, running.

Never said it to her face.

Oh, but the soaring, screaming, ventilation of the heavens

Was where she saw God and was at one with her,

Because God was a woman in a flyer's jacket and cropped hair;

A finger held up to feel the wind in the air, to test oneself against

Her majesty; to feel the exultation that comes with the love

Of journeying in the spaces she creates above earth's gravitational pull;

That renders everyone below, such tiny and incidental shadows

Against the sun, moving so far. And then the inevitable

Spinning from cirrocumulus to cirrostratus cloud banks,

With wheels scraping the foliage of the black and redwood pines;

Another bad landing, but with a crossed breast and a crooked smile

And a kiss to the deity. Destiny was calling her;

The record books would soon be full of Amelia;

Time to meet her maker.

She called her craft Elektra, daughter of the Gods

Whose twin jealous egos would scream from above

At those identical axis, one on the left, an avenging angel,

Sent to revenge her father's despair; the other

On the right, passive, to be the onlooker and steerer.

Duality of purpose, and of time; the first flight

Ended in a blown tire. Gut heavy with fuel, and two crew,

The fragility gunning along an arc, north to south, to Nukumanu,

Radio contact half an hour out of synch. Some said on lift,

The tail ground-looped; wheels caught in state of flux

Made it so difficult to move the undercarriage up.

Others that the Bendix loop, her navigation,

Made confusion of her plan of direction.

When radio failed, Morse scraped along the panic line,

.

DOT DOT DOT DASH DASH DASH DOT DOT DOT

DOT DOT _ DASH

DOT

Answered by silence.

Where she crashed will never be known,

Her unborn children will never grow old,

Amelia's legacy was icy and cold;

But her soul

Soars onwards,

like a comet

through the cosmos.

[The final confirmed transmission from Elektra, above Howland Island, was received on 2nd July 1937. Various 'fake' messages received in the hours thereafter may have hindered recovery operations. After radio broadcasts failed, Morse code was attempted with no success. Amelia Earheart was declared dead on 5th January 1939.]

Learn more about this author, Bob Mundle.
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