The Flavor of Time
by Lalo Delgado

At times time tastes bitter,
Like a jungle herb about the wither.
Other times time tastes like honey,
like new found money,
just in time to pay the rent.
Today here in Cheyenne
within the last hour or so,
at the tip of the rainbow many saw
a Cessna plane
drop from the dark clouds
into sudden death
for the seven year old pilot
on the verge of breaking a record
for being the youngest flyer
to cross the American sky,
youngest to try, youngest to die.

Lalo Delgado, Denver's late poet laureate, wrote this poem on April 10, 1996, following the crash of seven-year-old Jessica Dubroff's plane after take-off from the Cheyenne airport. She was killed, along with her father and a flight instructor, as she tried to set a cross-country flight record by the youngest pilot. Lalo, in town for a series of WAC Tumblewords events, was touched by her death and penned the poem for an April 11 reading with C.L. Rawlins at the Laramie County Public Library.
- posted by Michael Shay @ 9:03 AM