the japanese bumblebee


i've often wondered if it really was
a honorable way to die:
leather tentacles bind you
to your seat, the plane grumbles
as it knifes through
a billion gallons of cold, blue wind.
up there, between white mushrooms,
you stare through scratched goggles
and a dirty windshield
at your target, green tongues of water
lick at its sides,
you clutch the flaps and the throttle
so tightly your knuckles turn bone-white;
you watch your nose dive down,
that cold steel womb pregnant
with death you must deliver;
in an instant, you wonder
how honorable it is
to be a bumblebee,
why honor twists your stomach like a wet rag,
paints your tingling skin with sweat,
why honor makes your heart beat faster
and faster and faster and faster
and then


© Mark E. Dougherty