The first one is called "Unidentified Flying Object,"
for Will.
One: the elements, if not cruel, can seem inhospitable.
But the trail to the Grand Canyon
proved to be five kind miles of switchback.
Just glimpses of vista acclimating us
to the tremendous.
At the North Rim, 1/40 of that foreign space
was enough to overwhelm.
At least there were swallows, their aerial ballet.
One whizzing past us toward the Canyon floor
faster than a hawk after a little snack.
We needed to return to a habitat and Sedona
obliged with its smaller scale.
Oak Creek Canyon, moss green pools,
meadows surrounding our waists with the intense one
mindedness of a home tribe circling the white intruders.
But friendly this time.
A miniature waterfall chilled us awake
before we crawled grinning like amphibians onto warm rocks.
The dragonflies would light on the back of a hand
just long enough for us to study them.
And one day, serendipity, a kind of trail guide was provided us.
A young woman named Lisa who appeared in the woods
like a doe.
Eyes dark, limbs delicate, the center of stillness,
but unafraid.
She told us of wild asparagus, raspberries
ripening, the blackberries rampant right
there for the taking.
She showed us the tattoo near her left breast, a heart lifted
up by slender wings.
The symbol, she said, for lasting freedom.
And later, bathing in the river: I feel so unnatural
when I'm wearing clothes.
Desire stripped us of many pretensions.
But we weren't wild enough to touch her.
She led us down to the apple orchard.
Innocence, I thought, leading us back
to innocence and not temptation.
But we couldn't follow her all the way in.
We didn't have time.
That old complaint.
Two: sundown on the interstate, we're creatures in transit,
alert, herding past the red of mesas,
the blackish green of chaparral, not speaking unless in danger.
Not stopping while the way ahead is clearly marked.
We'd just passed a ranch called Back O' Beyond.
And that's exactly where we are.
Long past through the looking glass, far
from our warped reflections.
And now, that sudden sphere of light
too low on the horizon to be a star,
too large and bright for a planet.
What the hell is that?
What should we call the widening beam?
It emits Earthward in those swirling vapors
we've seen somewhere before.
Like fumaroles before the volcano blows,
or the back lighted steam of city sewers
when passion is nowhere else in sight.
Is this what Lisa meant when she said:
I swear there's real sanity in the open air?
Now, the tractor beam is swallowed up by its source,
and the luminous mists follow.
And it all recedes into the depth of atmosphere.
Much as we vanished at the canyon's north rim looking
down and down, and later dissolved
in the desert's middle distance, looking for that one site
where our spirits might lift again and not feel so alien.
I told my father about this.
And he said, yeah, right.
And I said, what do you mean?
You saw a UFO.
And I said, Dad, what's the definition of a UFO?
And he said it's an Unidentified Flying Object.
And I said, thank you.