Silver Bird Above San Francisco
A free-verse ode to aviation’s mundane miracle, using William Carlos Williams’ “so much depends” as structural refrain across six sections—from a torque-spec’d bolt to sleeping passengers to ground observers—culminating in a formally fractured final stanza that breaks the phrase across 17 lines, syntax itself suspended like the plane between blues. (Inspired by a June 2025 flight out of SFO, San Francisco.) Includes bonus Pindarian ode version.
Commercial aviation is a mundane miracle: hundreds of people nap in a pressurized tube and arrive on schedule. My poem, inspired by a June 2025 departure from SFO, praises that calm as an engineered faith in bolts, checklists, and invisible labor.
The poem rewrites William Carlos Williams’s “so much depends” as a structural refrain and stress frame. Each recurrence pivots viewpoint—mechanic, passenger, ground watcher, pilot, engineer—while Bay Area landmarks trace the widening circle of ascent.
Technical diction carries the lyric load: torque to spec, witness marks, castellated nuts, Jet-A, autopilot… A century of wreckage and regulation compresses into routine, until the refrain breaks into “So— / much— / depends”, the missing period leaving dependency hanging in the air.
A collapsed appendix includes an alternate Pindaric-ode version, left unedited, to show similar material under another unusual form of praise.
So much depends / upon
the click of a bolt torqued
to seventy foot-pounds
in the hum of a Renton hangar
before dawn,
holding wing-root
to fuselage, metal
to metal, two hundred souls / to air.
The jet banks wide past San Bruno Mountain,
spiraling over Pacifica, seaward
over darker blue—
white scratch widening.
Inside: heads back, sleep masks down,
screens dimmed. But one
watches the city
shrink, bridges thread to silver,
salt ponds checkered below.
At Crissy Field a child
looks up, tracks the flash:
that small bone
thrown skywards, bearing hundreds.
Someone walking the headlands
sees it climb between
blues—the sky, the sea—
carrying hundreds
toward gates unseen.
And so much depends / on what awaits.
Pilots dream in the sky;
horizons tilt until down is up,
the inner ear betrays,
mirages flicker across the glass,
clear air chokes.
So much depends / on instruments over instinct.
At Lands End) where cliffs
fall to the Pacific, someone
sees the sun-glint skate the bay:
so much depends
upon spar bolts, splice plates,
engineers’ calculations,
torque to spec, witness marks,
castellated nuts,
upon what was checked at dawn—
hundreds carried on an inch of steel,
engines inhaling Jet-A,
exhaling their debt as fire.
So much depends
on twelve seconds
at Kill Devil Hills,
that century
a coast away
from the sleeping passengers—
pilots choking in clear air,
freezing and burning,
steering into fog and ground,
just vanishing—
they arrived at their gate
on the appointed date—
their least likely fate.
Autopilot holds;
test pilots auger into desert;
engineers bend over tombstone books;
crashes get written into clauses—
a century of wreckage
compresses to routine,
so this morning you could doze / through heaven.
So—
the jet climbs still,
spiraling through sun glare.
Two hundred dreamers
oblivious to their ascent,
surrendered to autopilot,
to what was torqued before dawn,
to checklists humming in the ear—
much—
more than watchers can see:
unstained, the white bird
between two blues,
climbing past late gulls,
past Farallones,
bone to bird to geometry—
depends
Alternate version: a Pindaric ode by GPT-5 Pro (unedited but inspired by final free verse version). For a superior laert LLM imagination of ‘Pindaric ode’ in English, see ‘Apollonian #1’.
Strophe I
At noon the span burns clean; the Gate’s red ribs keep their measure.
Past San Bruno Mountain the bank begins—
seaward across Pacifica’s white surf, then bayward,
clockwise the radius holds in clear air.
Offshore, sparing South City the sound.
Sutro pins the noon; the ponds flare white.
Container cranes in Oakland bow and hold.
Someone shades their eyes; a child finds the loop—
silver ellipse, again, again—
and thinks: that white bone holds lives.
Still rising.
Belts low and tight; a pressurized hush.
The push sets in the seat and in the teeth.
Three hundred sleepers tilt and lift in blue.
Winglets scythe their arcs; the yaw damper steadies.
Flaps stepping in; slats stowed; the nose writes circles.
LNAV holds the lead; VNAV lifts the floor.
Tablets map the climb; masks already down.
One awake holds the window, will not blink.
“Climb and maintain one-five thousand”, dry in the ear.
The skin takes sun; the rivet lines run true.
Phones pool small estuaries of blue.
Inside: quiet thoroughness—checklist, crosscheck, callout.
Still rising.
Epode I
Years paid this silence:
Kill Devil Hills—twelve seconds held,
desert floors where test flights failed,
regs written in blood; Whitcomb’s tuned wing;
centuries of wreckage and of math—
before we learned to sleep through heaven’s door;
so this noon could be nothing.
Strophe II
At Land’s End a walker tracks the chalk
inscribed on blue—clockwise—by that mote.
Far side: Tam; far off: the Farallones like coins.
Down-bay the ponds go pink; the freeway braids.
Gulls sheer off; the craft climbs past their reach.
A hand lifts—shade or blessing—for the climb,
the salt-bright light, the clean exactness—
a white bone between blue and blue, unstained,
carrying strangers to meetings, funerals,
a lover at a gate.
Still rising.
Antistrophe II
Autothrottle keeps the bargain with the air.
Hydraulics think in pounds; the pitot speaks in knots.
Logbooks: o-rings, borescope, dye; night-shift hands.
ETOPS is not a word here but a trust.
In rows, the living cargo—errands and griefs;
homecomings; a lover at a gate—
lean back, go dark; the crew minds time and fuel.
A finite engine compresses air, burns fuel,
spends the heat as thrust, and keeps its covenant.
Still rising.
Epode II
All this to make a bus with wings—
miracle compressed to Monday—
so that a noon can stay a noon.
Still rising.
Climb, then go level. Leave a thin white proof.