WEBVTT

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Here's one other
poem about flying

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and the title is a technical
term, it's called Climbing Out.

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Technically you are at one
end of the runway and you

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have rushed the
throttle forward,

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so you are running
down the runway,

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and then you tilt the
nose of the plane up.

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And from that
moment on until you

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get to the altitude
you want, you

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are doing something
called climbing out.

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Blue fluid in my limbs, momentum
buoys me up at takeoff speed

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as I lose ground for that
puzzle older than hearsay, whose

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thralldom is a witless
bird navigating a meadow.

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Then heavily afloat,
I run the river

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rapids we know only by effect.

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Smoke chugging downwind, apple
bars swinging their fruit

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like sensors, the heat
mirage gusty over Lake Cayuga

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when, as now, it's flat
steel burning in the sun.

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Below me planes sit,
nose up, on the airfield

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like energy resting.

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Only cloud puffs high above.

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At 3,000 feet, hard
atilt, I stall,

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and a warning buzzer
screams like a marmoset

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loose in the cabin.

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The hull trembles,
shudders twice

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like a woman gently
coming, then nestles

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straight down toward
quilted green and bedrock,

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till I get wind of
the right attitude

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for lying long on the air,

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and land like someone tripping
over toys in the darkness:

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stagger, lurch, recovered fall.

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But late at night, still
awake in the birdless,

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starless black of
my bedroom, I am

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the moon rinsed with
glitter, floating full

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over a pokey and obedient land.

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I am motion unmasked
by a wafer of steel.

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I am lift made visible.

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I am a dancer with starched
coat tails for wings.

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I am the mouth of a river
whose source is the sky.

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I am trembling and hot
from this power-on stall.

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I am flight luscious.

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I am kneeling on air.

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