What town are you going to make for yourself?

I would like it

if I came home and saw

you wrote a poem for me.

It would be late

I would be hungry

I would eat it like a snack

and totter off to bed.

 

Late Landing

Early evening. Out the window, slender smoke ledge of cloud suspends the horizon. Above it the sky silvers into blue. Below, all is void and the grid of earth spinning below, spirals of white houses.

The city is distant

glowing rose

inside a hard clear moat. Night is drifting down from the sky. 

Who could think of sleep now? Sails open. 

Chairs are being set outside. 

Girls slip on sandals 

and shake their moist hair down to the ground.

It’s evening in New York. Wake up.

Bernoulli

I look down from the window

and what I see is impossible

to decipher

Perhaps we were not meant to look at the earth

from this angle

we have no eyes for what it is

we are always lost from above

until we see a lake shaped like a map

or a cluster of black roofs

that reminds us of home

My friend is an engineer who once built planes

He says humans still don’t quite understand

why they fly

There are equations

that don’t tie out

There are assumptions

that no one has proven

The physics don’t work

But planes fly

it is true

They are up in the air

I am in them

Their impossible feat

an act of faith 

and terrible imagination

Transfer

When you leave, the passengers look like you.

They’re from your town,

They eat at your restaurants.

Then you land in Rome.

How could you have been so wrong?

They’re Romans, clearly.

Didn't you see the luggage?

Didn’t you hear them speak?

Didn’t you see him lower his lids,

kiss her ear,

whisper

finally.

Seated

I want a flight attendant

To call me to bed

To tell me it's been secured

To tell me what to turn off

To stow.

Where to sit.

I want her in a dark voice

with champagne edges.

I will do what she says.

I will follow every command.

New Injuries

Actually, this is easy.

I got used to

the slow, hot, painful

burn of you long ago.

Business Class

I am slouched against the plane's window, cold head wasted from daytime numbers. The ice night passes below. I will hang my coat. I will drink the free wine. I will imagine I am different than this. I turn off the overhead light and in the blue black feel the air of the earth rush under my feet. There is a woman knitting. Across the aisle a man with a paper stares at one word for twenty minutes. It is silent except for the engines which are a 1972 Ford LTD late Saturday night driving me and my mother, fog sleep descending on us. A stewardess arrives and lifts me, tiny and curled, whispering home. She carries me in her arms to the rim of the plane. Cities spread forward, dots of white and orange, blinking. In between them, like gravity, blackness. Goodnight she says. I look up at her and and shake my head no. Feed the engines the wine and burn my clothes for fuel. I will help you hunt for quarters in the seat cracks, we'll pay the pilot to continue on, to Godthab, to Gdansk, to the Black Sea, to Ceylon, to Borneo. Just keep the plane flying. Let the air hold us aloft. We can remain forever on the dark side of the earth, out of day's reach.

Absinthe

You are laying on your side, pale moon silk molting into mattress. You are bent and still, listening to the other end of a wire that's stretched taut across hills, buried beneath black cities, under moss, piped through rivers. It spins into my mouth, wraps itself like a bandage on my swollen tongue. Each time I mouth a worm word a thin trickle of electricity follows the light night path to your bed, your ear, your wet lungs, your silver, shimmering skin. Don't sleep, not yet.