(for Lt. Col. Boyd D. “Buzz” Wagner)
It must have felt strange, letting the world fall from your hands—
that first skyward yaw pulling the wheels from the ground,
Johnstown shrinking to hills and smokestacks below,
and the wide sky, waiting with arms outstretched.
You were a boy with steel wings and quiet eyes,
flung far from home, drawing fire in churning skies,
and through that hellish heaven above,
eight names fell behind your streaking shadow—
planes broken and folded into silence,
your guns unstitching their borrowed air.
They called you the first ace—
because we saw who you really were,
the first to rise and not come back the same.
A poet once wrote, something does not love a wall,
and the sky is no different. The impossible
weight of metal surrendered to the wind,
pulling glory from the sky, the same weight
that breaks all our heroes.
And in the January cold, when you came home to Johnstown,
the town surged forward, and stood still for you,
twenty thousand strong,
lining the winter streets in silence and frozen breath.
Still, we carry your memory like a warm flame,
and lest we forget, it is etched in Grandview stone.
Even the sky remembers with each passing breeze—
airy whispers drifting over your grave.
And when we pass by and read your name,
we pause and glance once more toward the sky—
our hearts pulled upward, as if we might leave the ground
to feel what it meant to rise and not come back the same.
©Glenn Lyvers 2025
(“Buzz” is buried in Grandview Cemetery, Johnstown, PA)