another one,
Burma, Indo-China
steamy burial grounds
for pilots who lost their way
or were clipped from the sky
by the ****

unfortunate chaps
who were picked clean
goggle-eyed skeletons when
we retrieved them--all so a family
a million miles gone could have
a closed casket of bones

then we got orders
to head north, to the passes
that sliced peaks too high for
our biggest birds, too cold
for fuel to burn with air
what little there was

we landed at a Tibetan strip
more slush than snow, and hiked
the full day to the site, bags for bones
on our shoulders, **** for brains it seems,
since the boys we found were frozen
solid, crisp as the day they died

two of them, staring through
a fine cockpit,  dead as dirt, but
preserved by the mountains' white
air, ready for redemption while we sat,
smoked, and puzzled how to haul
them whole from the heavens