o I have slipped

At Coit Tower, I'm sitting on the shoulders of Christopher Columbus and watching fighter planes skim the sailboat-spangled bay. The navigator's craggy features make excellent handholds; with my fingers up his cobwebbed nose and my bare feet in the folds of his bronzed cloak I survey what he's wrought: wide eyes, a hundred upturned faces, variously agape at the blue belly of a Hornet as it rips directly overhead. The noise is glorious, sends a shudder down both our spines. I am vaguely considering atmospheric particulates and flag-draped coffins but, really, America, fuck yeah.

"Hot day-mn," declares Gold Teeth, with the appropriate slap of a knee. "They be rolling! They be rolling! Can't nobody stop them now!"

"Sheisse," breathes Grandmother Tourist, and the knock-kneed child is as amazed by this as anything else.

The planes are regrouping in a series of casual arcs over the east bay and the crowd is briefly silent. In the lighted haze, the Golden Gate stands like a smile. A man below me clears his throat.

"LET's-go-GI-ants!"