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Nels Hanson Just now the TV said they're sure you lived, greater mystery solved but sadder, our theory wrong, the crash we thought near a Howland Island in dim Phoenix Chain. Tanks thirsty, radio on the fritz again, antenna sheared, dead reckoning, Amelia no expert pilot, an Icarus, some crack-ups, and navigator Fred Noonan drinks too much - The silver twin-prop with tail-boom tries to finish circling Earth before vanishing, each decade's stray shard of fuselage with rivet holes or shrunken glove, a comb, army-olive tuna can false clues tonight, wreck east in the Marshalls, island sliver with 900 souls. Secret Japanese photo from '37 shows two Caucasians on a far Pacific atoll, picture matching album pictures, slim Earhart sitting on wood dock, back to us, tousled short thick hair, in profile. You look like Lindbergh, so handsome, pretty, ethereal, svelte aeronaut the day an angel dipped androgynous wing to drop one feather. Imperial Navy took you and Fred to Saipan in the Marianas, prison camp for spies, your last forced landing. How you died, who killed you why, your body's whereabouts, mass grave, crematorium, remain whispers of the spiraled nautilus past bones of fishes. The U.S. knew about it, hiding broken enemy code kept mum, except lone woman from Arkansas, Cassandra no one believed. Hid under runway your aluminum plane survives, Lockheed "Electra" named for sister of Orestes. The Koshu towed it on a barge, same size as yours as natives swore these 80 years, the woman not a woman and not a man. All those times we worried how cold ocean was, teeth of sharks, black wave exploding on a white horseshoe reef you must evade to skate lagoon's still turquoise, a shallow aquamarine, crushed coral, quick ivory beach with palms, green cresting jungle creepers splashing windscreen, Fred's Mayday kindling battery, canteen of gin or rum, the wayward map in flames on orange sky so you defer flight to vivid birds, stacked sunset cumulus, isle's coned volcano a sybil breathing azure fire wafting vast constellations as flaring sorcery refines gold plume by plume pinions quenched by a bluish ember. Copyright 2018. All rights reserved.
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