Waiters

Along the river, men  (they were mostly men, mostly middle aged) many in hard hats, black coated where not in day-glow yellow tunics, leaned on the railing, waiting. It was 8:30 in the morning. Why were they there. The object of their patient anticipation: a flyover by 5 F-15 jets of the Massachusetts Air National Guard for training and promotional purposes.

I trotted by people lined up in small groups the way from the Museum of Science to the Mass Ave bridge checking the time, readying their cameras, some with serious lenses on them as thick and long as my calf. I also scanned the cirrus-brushed sky and listened for the roar of the jets. Unmuffled motorcycles beside me and the Red line trains on the Longfellow Bridge over there might have been them but weren't.

What were you waiting for, I wonder. A spectacle, of course, but meaning what? Patriotic puissance? Power handled with precision?  The thump of thunderous noise? A flight of angels? The sky usually doesn't get this kind of attention, unless the prospect of jets passing in formation articulates it for us.

When they did come, from the south over the Esplanade, then west along the river, south again over Fenway Park, they flew low, in a V much like that of geese, with a small rumble left behind as they surged ahead. Sleek and angular chevrons, they seemed pure graphic, transcending their war machines mission. The faint brown exhaust extending behind them, however, confirmed their earthly origin.

I was ready for some thorax-thumping noise, but what were you, waiters, looking for? I was put in mind of the residents of 'your insular city of the Manhattoes' standing on the shore looking away to sea, where is to be found that majesty we so much miss.

They certainly were an elegant sight as they roared over a second time, not much more than a thousand feet above the river, this time in a new formation--four staggered and an outlier leader--heading west and away. Everything was over in less than five minutes, and the construction workers went back to their scaffolding; the MIT personnel to their offices and classrooms, to share on their cellphones the way the jets had made the sky into a race-course and run it. Who says men aren't dreamers?