One of the writers in…

One of the writers in our local Oak Park writers' group passed away unexpectedly this week. I'm hoping to help organize a memorial reading for him. I've been looking at some of the classic memorial writing, such as Henry Scott Holland's "Death is nothing at all", Amy Louise Kerswell's Miss me but let me go, Mary Frye's lovely Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep.

In reading, I was struck by how appropriate High Flight would be for a writer's passing, as much as for the pilot who wrote it.

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long delirious, burning blue,
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew -
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untresspassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

-- Pilot Officer Gillespie Magee

2 thoughts on “One of the writers in…”

  1. Mary Anne Mohanraj

    I’m not sure; that might be intrusive to the family. But we did hear him read his work regularly, every month; he was one of the group organizers.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *