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Prairie Schooner 79.3 (2005) 73-76



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Aerial Views

"How bright are all things here!"
– Thomas Traherne

1.

Your smile has burnished this night for me.
Fumbling with carry-on and brief case,
my turn comes to pass you,
composed at the plane's exit
where you wish us, leaving,
a good and pleasant evening.
This flight has carried me
across bright things so far
from my mind for many years,
and I am grateful –
my words whispered at your ear
bring back the lost daylight
of your smile like the final
ember of the sun departing with a flare.
More beautiful, truly, than any I've seen.

2.

I saw once, very late, a July moon
smiling so low over the curve
of a golf course, where she and I lay.
It hung like tigereye, as if waiting
to be flattered and kissed
before settling behind the slender neck
of the palm arched above us. [End Page 73]
Seventeen, our backs itched
from soft pins of Bermuda grass,
barely a breeze raised
her nipples to my touch.
Yet I shook, shook
as if fevered and dying on a ship
and she feared reaching shore.

3.

With the draw-back of tide,
fiddler crabs pop up from foamy holes.
Kids on bikes crush them for sport
beneath their knobby tires.
They throw Frisbees into the receptive breeze
and chase the errant flights.
Not stopping to coat their bodies in lotion,
they do not yield to the penetrating brightness.
All day it goes, a fact of earth and play,
until the fevered sky shakes,
the umbrellas fold,
the gulls pity themselves.

4.

We knew her before she was born,
her name a pearl of prophesy
somewhere dreamed before we were born.
We whisper to her rolling like a soft wave
beneath our warm hands upon your belly
in the middle of the night.
At first, we thought there were two of her,
one from each of our golden dreams,
that they would pass through [End Page 74]
the gateway of mercy and peace,
holding hands, we half
expected. The oracle of ultrasound
lit an outline where one daughter could be
noted, it seemed to us, from an aerial view,
such an unsurveyed parcel
bordered by a beautiful confusion
of trees, fields, and rivers.

5.

The plane has been set
on a level course, the cabin lights
extinguished; a prayer of silence
spreads into the choral hum of jets
speeding toward stillness . . .
A few reading lights come up
like street lamps ahead down
a highway. Only here do I keep
hours so close to someone I expect
never again to lay eye on,
brushing arms, avoiding a meeting of eyes.
I reach above, twist the nozzle
that shoots down a current of air,
then channel into my cell a cone of light
that floods the pages of my book.
I devote attention to words as a monk to beads.

Rubbing between my fingers the corner
of a page, I turn
to whatever imprinted image comes next:
a defiant cloudburst, or rout of demons,
descent into an extinct volcano, or never-to-be-
reached waveless ocean. [End Page 75]
     "Something to drink?

Sir, something to drink?"
     Oh, why not?
Reaching across, sorry,
for some mineral water –
     beautiful, more than any,
is her smile from eternity,
where, it is obvious, the day never
ends, nor horizon, nor young love,
play by the sea, receiving a child,
nor Why not? nor Why?

Why anything of beauty should be
is unanswerable from the earth.
In the sky, it seems as simple as a smile.
I press and light the figure of a stick man
holding a cup, wanting water,
and bring my thirst back.
She will return with kindness
in the dark, remain with us all
who must be returned to the earth.

Michael Cornett is managing editor of the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies published by Duke University Press.


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