Jessomae

The great Jessomae was my grandfather's plane
And it was inside her cockpit he died
When a thunderstorm caught them at the end of a climb
And sent her into a terrible dive
We kept all her wreckage in a shed in the back
And at sixteen I wanted to fly
So with hammers and mallets and bolts and screwdrivers
I rebuilt the love of his life

It took me four years and so many spare parts
That I don't know if anything's left
From that pile of iron-soaked, crumpled-up steel
From the back of my grandfather's shed
But as she roared down the runway in a fresh coat of green
I didn't think that he would mind
That this Jessomae wasn't the one that he knew
As we lifted off into the sky

Her joystick was sluggish and I can't say that I'm
The best pilot for all of her charms
But she flew like the hands gripping on to the wheel
Lay at the end of my grandfather's arms
And she banked side to side like she was sixty years younger
And groaned with the pleasure of flight
As her engine, with coughs and with spits and with sputters
Sent her into a terrible dive

As he sits by the foot of my hospital bed
My father has tears in his eyes
How he almost had lost both his father and son
To temptations of ungrateful skies
I say it's okay, I'll be back on my feet
And I'll never go flying again
But the words just sound like imitations of truth
As my memories come rushing back in
Of caressing her wings and constructing her sides
Of the way that her welded joints squealed
Of her last gasping breaths on that terrible dive
Of her parts scattered around in a field