Anne's blog

(liner notes for track 1)

There must be a day, I imag­ine,
when a great ship is finally
born to the world…
a day unlike all the others.

The sound of horns is in the air,
call­ing all the peo­ple…
and they come from near and far,
excit­edly, with such antic­i­pa­tion,
for they have worked
and dreamed of this day
for so long.

A sud­den hush
the moment comes…
and the great hangar doors begin to open,
slowly, slowly,
hun­dreds of feet of steel
and gears heav­ing and groan­ing…
no per­son moves, no one can breathe
at the sound of those great doors
slowly, slowly,
open­ing, and…
look!  there she is!

The crawler-platform rum­bles into view
car­ry­ing the great lady-ship atop;
pris­tine and glis­ten­ing she is,
even in the shadow of the doors.
Slowly, slowly,
ever so slowly,
now almost out of the door­way…
and sud­denly, with a pierc­ing flash,
the first rays of sun­light
glance the top of the great lady-ship,
blind­ing every­one for an instant
with her brilliance!

A cheer goes up!  Hands clap, some tears…
the moment is pure magic.
This shin­ing bird of flight,
an engi­neer­ing mas­ter­piece of all times,
just emerged
from behind those hangar doors,
now stand­ing proudly,
gleam­ing with the work and sweat and vision of thousands.

And as the crawler-platform con­tin­ues to roll
slowly, slowly,
out to the launch pad
car­ry­ing the great lady-ship atop,
all of the peo­ple who have dreamed of this day,
all of them there still stand­ing in awe,
silently think
the same col­lec­tive thought–

“I just want to see her fly!”

copy­right 2008 Anne Cabrera

Tags: Columbia, hangar doors, liner notes, rollout

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 25th, 2009 at 2:50 pm and is filed under Columbia liner notes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.