Near Syncope

A poem in 'sprung rhythm' about my career-ending final flight

Returning from a tour of Kauai, 2004.

Beating toward more beauty, full of bloody joy,

Its dangered draining wrings visions: care-free ground

Below and rushing up, my craft and pax imperiled.

Behind me, six hearts in rhythm on our journey’s latter half.

Then:

Near syncope dims all beauty, gravity’s silent sound

Folding fan of focus brings dark evening to midday.

Vision closing quickly, all faculties ease and rest.

The goal becomes not beauty, nor shearing cliffs of awe.

Six hearts stay unaware, on their blissful ride:

Vacations from the real, a care-free groundless flight,

Promised tales to share with envious

Home-bound others, to embellish with each light.

I wrestle the demon’s effort to end my flight, then

To fill the heart anew with beauty, replace the draining

With blooded warmth and focus, to feel it rushing back.

How quick is the turn from beauty, to its lack?

For three years I flew helicopter tours on the Hawaiian Island of Kauai. During my final flight, on December 5th 2005, I experienced an episode of near syncope: I nearly passed out in the cockpit.

Landing a bit later I felt fine, as if nothing had happened. But I wasn’t about to jeopardize 43 years of safe flying until and unless I knew why I’d experienced the near syncope. The physician I saw that afternoon had bad news. My aviation career was over.

The poem conveys ( I hope) the emotions and vision that passed through my mind during the 30 seconds the event unfolded. Had I passed out that day I would have crashed, likely killing myself and six other people. My passengers were tourists taking pictures, gathering stories to tell envious friends back home in Pittsburgh, Portland, and Pasadena. They never knew what I knew in the cockpit.

The Na Pali cliffs of Kauai

Kauai is a place made to be photographed, enjoyed, absorbed for its beauty its lush, tropical views, and its frequent postcard-perfect rainbows. Kauai is also a place of contrasts: Stark beauty and present peril; carefree living, and exorbitant prices; serene location thick with people, vehicles, noise, and viewpoints.

With its contrasts it was perhaps the best place to finish my flying career. I was 56, intending to fly for several more years. It was not to be. I’d flown all over the world, seen all manner of exotic locations, doing flying assignments I’d never imagined. It was time.

I closed my logbook, left Kauai, and now write about the proximity of beauty and blight in a world replete with both. A world where those two seeming opposites often exist together can open our eyes to a more expansive vision. A world where it takes almost passing out to wake us up.

Again, many thanks to David Keplinger for the prompt, I hope it’s at least close to the mark.