Over my house you flew. I heard the low hum of your blades well before I saw you. That's how sound travels. I saw you in the deep distance. You were beautifully black against the Carolina blue sky.

A low rumble. You sounded like my neighbor's Mustang coasting down the street, out on another adventure. Brrr. But your sound was different. An unyielding drone. Brrr. Nothing broke in your sound to permit the shift a Mustang would need. There was no need to change gears. Your blades knew nothing of that.

When you flew over my head the first time I did not know what you were. I was unfamiliar with your airframe. I simply saw you. I simply witnessed you. Silhouette. Power. Many of you flew overhead that day. Helicopters with blades that spun fast and buzzed low and many in a formation. Low. Loud. Cacophonous. I will never forget that day. I will never forget that sound.

Today, I saw you again. I understand what you are. You are the Apache AH-64E. 1-130th Attack Battalion. North Carolina National Guard.

You are weapons of war. You are men and women with missions. Pilots with vectors home and gunners with radios tuned for the airports at which you train. On clear days your flight path goes over my home. When I hear you approach from far away, blades in the deep, I never fail to run outside and witness you fly by. No matter what I am doing in the interim. I frantically wave at you from the ground. I do not care that you see me. I do not know you. But I love to wave at you. No matter how mundane your mission is on any given day, to me, your mission is the highlight of my day. Your vector is over my home most days. I watch you fly over me.

You are up there. I am down here.

Often when I hear your rotors rumble in the deep distnace I am trapped in meetings or I am making decisions. When I hear you, when I hear the dirty rumble of your props underneath all else I drop everything. I make an excuse to turn my camera off. I vacate my obligations. Nothing is so important.

I run. I sprint outside. I do not give a single fuck. Few things are as important to me as witnessing you when you crest my home. I love to wave at you. I do not care that you see me. I do not know you. You are up there and I am down here. I love to wave at you; it is important to me. You fly over me.

I watch you slip into the blue distance. Going, going, gone. As I watch you leave, a single feeling dominates me:

I want to be you. I want to be up there. I want to fly the machine. I want to pilot the machine. I want to fly free shallow along the bends of the Neuse River. I want to fly over the bump of the dam. I want to fly low beside the interstate where men in cars drive. And wave at the men on the road.

Men may dream. I dream. God knows, I dream.