Based on a story about second chances and in which a coward lives a hero’s legacy:

The Last Flight
by Michael Romani

In this story of recompense and second chance
Second Lieutenant Becker escapes aerial combat over France
Taking refuge in a cloud for a moment in his timeless flight
Stricken by cowardice, he flees pensively into his plight
Such are times that can be measured only in eternities
And where only facing fear can bring true serenity

Landing in an airfield into a time and place never seen
When he took off in the morning, it was Nineteen Seventeen
Swallowed by that white vacuum of twilight mysterious cloud
Things soon transpired that science never allowed
He belonged to the sky and so that sky took him
To a place where providence allowed him to reconsider his whim

Tricks of desperate times are often played into jokes
But Becker's reality was something more than elaborate hoax
And while above fighter jets flew in a striking formation
The Lieutenant learned of his friend's fate in his interrogation
Old Lead Bottom he learned had lived a hero's surprise
Learning of this brought distress bleeding from Becker's eyes

In a moment's cowardice he had thought to make his escape
With that strained sort of idiocy worn like Superman's cape
When playing the part of a hero in all of its ill gotten idiocy
Now led him by time and her tricks to become part of history
Now he'd rewrite boyish lark into soldier's dignity
And instead of discredit, the pilot grew into his legacy

Afraid and panicked he had left Lead Bottom to stay and die
Now, Becker flees his cowardice fighting to return to the sky
In an instant an overgrown boy becomes a better sort of man
Knowing with his only certainty, he must do just what he can
Flying high into the white clouded sky and into history
The future he fled from learns of Becker's heroic legacy

Becker, Lead Bottom's "Terry" comes flying in to save his friend
Becker's determination saw him through to needed end
Upward and onward in fast pace to embrace his shameless death
A package of effects was all that fickle time had left
For there are more things than dreamed of in philosophy
And somewhere in a twilight passage, a coward lived a hero's legacy

(c) May 5, 2017 Michael Romani