KITTY HAWK, DECEMBER, NINETEEN-THREE Livingston Taylor ©2002 L. Taylor/Morgan Creek Music (ASCAP) We can fly We can soar into the air Look into forever And find the future there Spread your wings You're about to be free Kitty Hawk, December, Nineteen-three What a time for human kind What an era to be in Electric light to push back night Einstein in Berlin Edison and movies Fords rolling wheels Rockafellas energy Morgan's ruthless deals Big men chewing big cigars And chewing through the land Destiny was manifest Fate was in their hands Add to this mix Two earnest quiet men With their sister Katherine The adventure did begin In the hubrus that was the time They decided they could try To build a heavier than air machine And climb into the sky And they could fly.......... They read the work of Lilienthal Langley and Chanute But the theories of these pioneers In test did not compute So they cleaned the table to the wood And started in again To answer twisting riddles So the sky would let them in They found a place to test their thoughts Off the coast of Caroline Private and remote Windy all the time They learned of lift and drag and thrust And wind-tunneled everything The delicate pitch of the canard The roll of warping wings And the rudder was the final piece That late one night they saw The triad that became flight Pitch, roll, yaw And they could fly........... The morning comes the wind is right The plane is on the rail And Daniel's camera sees the moment pass For twelve small seconds They fly across the sands And the end of an ancient dream Is here at last It's a hundred years later But imagine what's in store As we tug on God's great beard And tap upon his door To the truth that lives in space We have set our sights Standing on their shoulders Wilbur and Orville Wright And we can fly............... Return to lyric index