I picked up the book at the Norwich dump years ago. Long live the book shed. We shouldn’t take it for granted, many thanks to the unsung volunteers…
The Lost Pilot by James Tate, published in 1967. In its day, this thin paperback sold for a dollar forty-five. On the back cover there’s a photograph of the poet holding an umbrella and leaning to the left, toward the edge of the frame, as if he’s about to walk off the edge of his own book. The Lost Pilot has been sitting on the shelf unopened since I brought it home from the dump. A thin book, like I say, easy to overlook. Why I slid it out this morning and re-read the title poem I can’t say. I just happened to notice the spine and I remembered standing in the book shed and reading it for the first and only time before today. The poem’s not long.
“The Lost Pilot” is about the poet’s father, who was reported missing over Germany on what was supposed to be his last mission. Just below the title is a dedication:
for my father, 1922-1944
That’s a poem in itself, isn’t it? A father dead at twenty-two.
In the poem, the lost pilot orbits the earth. The son looks up and sees him, once a year, this father who spins across the wilds of the sky. If he could, the son would cajole his father to return to earth, just once, to talk to him and explain what placed “you in that world / and me in this.”
My own father doesn’t orbit. He never did. He was an earthbound Chicago lawyer who died at 78 or 79. I’ve also got questions. Or maybe I’d just like to hear his voice on the phone for a few minutes. I never picked up when he called.
Another year passes and another, and still the poet’s father passes overhead, unwilling or unable to pause his compulsive orbiting and tell his son that this was all a mistake, their eternal separation.
And that’s it. The poem falls away. No false note of connection.
Peter Orner is a novelist, story writer, and essayist—as well as chair of the English and Creative Writing department at Dartmouth. His most recent book, Still No Word from You, was a finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. He is a volunteer with the Norwich Fire Department.