Ellen McGrath Smith: Tammi Jo Schults

To be a woman of a certain age the day the hero pilot is a woman!

As though, suddenly, a failsafe illusion just evaporates:

There is a type of people who have never taken their eyes

from the sky, who can’t stop thinking about flying.

They have always been, which is how the airplane became a thing,

that desire, which I imagine like a hole where the solar plexus

should be, but edged with magnetic material paired with

something not here, but above, in the atmosphere. It’s amazing, really,

that there are such people, of every gender. This is their category.

Please stop remarking, “She has nerves of steel,” when next week

you’ll be saying this to denigrate a woman in another field.

Copyright 2018 Ellen McGrath Smith

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Tammi Jo Schults and the plane she landed