A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry

In the Unlikely Event of a Water Landing

113 Fifteen Easy Minutes In the Unlikely Event of a Water Landing Don Colburn —US Airways Flight 1549 When the pilot told us to, I couldn’t take my glasses off and put my head down between my knees. I wanted to watch to the last moment before smithereens. Closing your eyes won’t help, not like in music. The eerie part wasn’t death touching down early but how quiet it was, how smooth. We were gliding, the buzz and rumble of engines gone, and I could hear everything— the crying (less than you think), Hail Marys, the man up front trying against the rules to call home. An old woman many rows back sang beautifully in Spanish, maybe to God, I don’t speak that language. I wish I had known they called the captain Sully and how Sully was a glider pilot too. We had no idea why it was happening, no inkling of geese or gulls, but we were losing altitude and the quiet sounded terribly wrong. After we banked left, Sully brought us down easy onto the river. The trick is to ride the thickening air down slow and plow into the water, head up like a duck, not to nosedive, jackknife, cartwheel, burn. When we didn’t die, some panicked. Suddenly there was time, and ice water sloshing at our ankles, our knees. How long can a heavier-than-air machine float? 114 A Face to Meet the Faces Someone named Josh knew to knock the door out over the wing. I didn’t notice the guy carrying his garment bag or the lady screaming for her shoes. I just remember getting pushed toward a hole in the side of the plane and tumbling out into the cold gray blinding afternoon which held me. I came to my feet on the submerged wing with the others and we walked on water. ...