(She is 81, like he is this year)

A poem by Bonnie Prince titled  High Flight for Joe Biden

Dear Joe. my dear old Joe,

You may think you are eternal

flying with angels above the clouds,

cock-sure, infallible, beyond gravity,

while hoping you appear in control,

divine, just short of godliness,

but, like all of us,

like me, also in my 81st year,

you are dying,

sloping down, descending now,

no longer resplendent, no longer godly,

no longer ascendant.

 

You are moving like all of us, elliptical,

oblique, moving in an ellipse,

an eclipse, circling the airport,

down toward commoners’ ground,

locked, like all of us,

in the epicycles of being 81,

looking in the self-confirming mirror,

vision warped by the gravity,

the trajectory

of hubris.

 

Dear Joe, I love you, but

I want you, now,

more than ever,

to see yourself caught

in the continuum of time and space,

that web that even eternal Einstein

could not exit.

 

Dear Joe, we both are hoping

for damage control,

praying for one last replay

of a fireworks display

to enlighten the world,

and one last chance to tell

the earthlings that the promise

of our being on the planet

mattered, that  our presence

in the world mattered,

and we were loved

for the lives that we lived,

and we made a difference.

 

You and I, Joe, each of us at 81,

we share the same trajectory.

Yet the gravity of anatomy, of biology,

is aiming downward now, dead serious.

Joe, we both are gravely mortal,

floating between cloud and soul.

 

Joe, we both are hang-gliding

on the wing of the lobe of our mind,

trying to find balance,

a stance, on the planet,

our wings are feeling gravity

taking us down now, gliding

to a lower level

seeking equity; seeking equilibrium.

 

Joe, I know how you feel,

but we both are 81 now.

We both are high-flying drones,

guided by satellite or instrument,

by North Star or lodestone,

by magnetic or electronic field,

by intuition, or vision, or AI,

but always inescapable  anatomy,

metabolically

in the biology of finality.

 

We are deep in mortality mode,

without a court appeal

without a safety net.

Our  landing gear are deployed,

hoping for a gentle touch,

a soft touch-down at the moment

of contact when our tires

jerk on the runway,

and we glide, seatbelts fastened

to a stop on the tarmac and taxi

down to the finale, grateful, at least

we did not crash

glad to slide,

on a slow play of earth and sky,

at the end of our Earth time,

our time for the final display,

the hubris of our lives, arrayed

against the promise

of our birth,

as told by our parents

our glide path.

 

Hey dear Joe,

we both are running

out of time.

 

Dear Joe, it’s quite likely

that we are all

in decline, but maybe

your taste for the ultimate Presidency

will buoy you up

and you can still

go viral after all!

 

And the last spark of light

that is uniquely our self,

the frail glint-mark

of sparked flint

that we finally make

upon the endless canvas

of the cosmos

will be inter-stellar.

 

Bonnie Prince    July, 2024