Marj Hahne

Elegy For Chuck Yeager

                  February 13, 1923–December 7, 2020

General, now you’ve broken the speed
of light, your body an infinite wave Goodbye

for now. Now you know light
needs no medium to lift and wing

into the glittering absence, and air
glides through a body no longer there.

You’ve long known sound
travels fastest in bodies solid with

life colliding life
forty-five thousand feet above

a dry desert lake. When you became
the Fastest Man Alive, did the sky

vibrate like air inside a drum
or did the air inside the drum

of your ear pulse
like a new world’s arrival?

Marj Hahne is a freelance editor, writer, and writing teacher, and a 2015 MFA graduate from the Rainier Writing Workshop, in poetry. She has performed and taught at over 100 venues around the country, including public radio and television programs. Her poems have appeared in literary journals, anthologies, art exhibits, and dance performances. To make poetry hospitable, she reads poems to dogs and pairs poems with craft beers, spirits, and coffee for her YouTube channel.