This poem, written in 2006, is in Chapter 3: Flora and Fauna of The Immigrant and the Outlaw.

The backstory is that my husband was an air traffic controller. Get a couple of controllers together, or a group of retired ones, and you still hear several of these terms.

The only one I didn’t hear from them was Immelmann. That came from a WWII letter from Danny Wilson, whose transition training and combat was as the pilot of a P-38. 

Joyride

Notch-tailed cadets
take turns in the traffic pattern
without benefit of control tower,
sweeping downwind,
shouldering baseleg,
gliding into low approach,
dipping, diving under
a graveled bridge along
Old Creamery Road,

emerging upwind, into
a steep Immelmann turn
against a peach and mauve glow
on a September evening,

chattering and fluttering afresh
into the traffic pattern
of young barn swallows,
dark above a flash of rosy tan,
crosswind, downwind,
for yet another spin.
—–

Barn swallows are such neat little birds, darting around the farm yard, lacing the air with their happy chitters. Their mud nest are fascinating, tucked up under joists in the barn. Childhood memories.