Current Photo Friday theme: Clouds
One of my heroes is gone. He loved his wife, his country, and science. He was an explorer, a dreamer, a doer. He has always been to my mind the true definition of a gentleman, like my own father. He has, for the last time, gone “down to the corner store for a pack of gum,” and I grieve for him and for his sweet widow Annie.
Thank you, John Glenn, for all the ways you served this country and were an example to the world of the best an American can be. You truly embodied the right stuff.
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 wind-swept heights with easy grace.
Where never lark, or even eagle flew —
And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
– Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
John Gillespie Magee, “High Flight”