It Could Be

I had been away for more than a year, with the Air Corps learning to fly.

Lomie came to see me; we had a week for love, then tears, again, “Goodbye.”

I was sent to Africa. My duty was to transport troops and cargo by air.

While flying one night, I had a strange vision; real enough to curl my hair.

I had just left Aden, Arabia; it was late at night, ten thousand feet above the Red Sea.

The vision began a story about a boy named Chance and a girl named Emily.

Chance was driving a team and wagon; transporting war time cargo, too.

Emily’s sympathy was with the Gray. Chance was serving with the Blue.

Was the date a coincident? It was November eighteenth, nineteen forty-four.

It was exactly three years ago that I met Lomie, yet I was looking back eighty years or more.

As I flew on toward my home base at Khartoum, the vision began to unfold.

It seemed to be from a previous life, but maybe it was from a story I had been told.

It took me back to another time, and showed how Chance met Emily.

From Alabama, she had traveled west by wagon train, with her family.

Chance, a young man from Indiana, went west, too, for he had been told

There was a chance for a better life, maybe fame or a fortune in gold.

He settled in Virginia City; found a job with a freight line hauling silver ore.

His route took him through Ragtown. There he met Emily, in a General Store.

When my mind returned to flying, the runway at Khartoum, I could see.

As I prepared to land, I wondered... Was I, Chance? Was Lomie, Emily?