I went to college at Ball State University at Muncie, Indiana, and spent my freshman year in Edwards Hall.  Because of overbooking the class of 1979, the first quarter was in a three in a two-man room.  When I got a chance to get out of that situation, I had a roommate that was a radio and television major, but was very good at music.  His name was Michael Albright.  I shared a few of my poems with him, and in those days my early poems were typed in a 6-by-8 inch book I kept adding pages to since computers are not what they are like they are now.  That year, 1976, I was still using Olan dey Gabona as my pen name. I didn’t start using my  Elias Tobias until 1990.
   One evening I checked out a good cassette recorder from the library and arranged for Mike to meet me in the lounge at the hall’s piano.  He looked through the poems, and I though he would pick a poem that be more of a song, but to within minutes he read the poem, Next Flight, and I could see the notes dancing in his head.  Like some things in life,there is one take, and this was one those times.
     I have since had the song’s notes put down on paper, and had the music, words, and the written song copyrighted. But this was done several years later, near the time I graduated.   That summer of 1976,  Mike had car problems on a highway hear his home in Anderson, Indiana, near Muncie.  He was walking back to his home at night.  A drunken driver crossed the center line, and hit him, running over his legs.  He bled to death, and the driver was never found to my knowledge.
     There was a song by Elton John out around this time called Rocket Man, and this poem has that kind of point of view.  I thought it was ironic that he chose the poem with the words, “take me on the next flight to earth.”
     You can here the audio recorded on the first take here. I hope you enjoy the song.   Check out a video of this song at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYLcL43rBoI.
 

Next Flight
Take me on the next flight  to earth;
it is the only home, I know.
It’s where good people are
and big oak trees grow.
It’s a place where people are
rhyming rhymes.
It’s a place without moving time.
Take me on the next flight  to earth;
It’s  a place filled of good
times of yesteryear,
not as place of nuclear fear.
Take me on the next flight back
to earth, I long to be near.