Overheard at a flight demonstration
Pensacola, Florida, 1993

Skies blue, geese in a vee.
I was on the 9 bus headed home
when I watched a Daily News lift softly
off a news stand in every direction
and I thought of my own thought
in its own soft arc touching down
as if it were nothing.

Long story short.
If it’s a night I like,
and the stars align, I rise right
off the pavement, lean south past the corner drug,
U-turn by the lake and alight at the curb.
Sometimes I’ll go with a torque roll
or even a tail slide,
and then I’m off to South Bend or even Vienna.
Sometimes I drop in on Janet up the street
or maybe Mike the pipe welder,
maybe Herb in IT.

Mostly I like to fly backwards in time.
Tucking my chin, arms up
I’ll ascend in a chandelle.
It’s mid-August 1944 and it’s the night
of my conception—the fan’s on, window open
and my mother pours two beers.
Of course, the war’s on, my father’s
home on leave and the allies have entered Normandy.
It’s late and the upstairs neighbor plays her victrola:
Ellington, Holiday, Armstrong
and when it’s quiet again,
when the sky moves through the trees
and the moon rests over Mars,
my mother says, Hey,
and my father looks up.