Going into a tailspin

in those days meant curtains.

No matter how hard you pulled back on the stick

the nose of the plane wouldn’t come up.

~~~

Spinning round, headed for a target of earth,

the whine of death in the wing struts,

instinct made you try to pull out of it that way, by force,

and for years aviators spiraled down and crashed.

~~~

Who could have dreamed that the solution

to this dreaded aeronautical problem

was so simple?

Every student flier learns this nowadays:

You move the joystick in the direction of the spin

and like a miracle the plane stops turning

and you are in control again

to pull the nose up out of the dive.

~~~

In panic we want to push the stick away from the spin,

wrestle the plane out of it,

but the trick is, as in everything,

to go with the turning willingly,

rather than fight, give in, go with it,

and that way come out of your tailspin whole.

 

~Edward Field~

 

~Corita Kent~

 

(Beyond the lovely words, I love it as a great early example of the remix “culture”, a case of additive worth, with Corita Kent taking the poem of Fields and rendering something extra beautiful with it.)