Flight Record

One night, flying cross country, I look downthe sides of the Sears and the John HancockBuilding towers, looking down the walls,a well of electric water, the drawn lightslift along the structures occulting the shadowoutlines of the verticals, the parallaxmaking deeper the dimensions of depth.

Some cities look like the embers of a firewhen you fly in. Against the faint pointsof the glowing ash, what might have beenthe scale of flames you don't want to think about.

And once, coming in late down the Hudsoninto Newark, I could look up Forty Secondthe whole way across the island like peekingthrough a crack into more light than lightacross the universe, by the convergencesa worm hole off to the side on night's horizon.

Or come into Quito during the day,you make a long gently rocking sidle upagainst the ridge on one side, and onthe other, Pichincha's slope down, and youstill above those clouds climbing its meadows,the sharp fall away to the plateau and itsdistant other volcanoes                                            then the groundsuddenly rises up to meet you asand on a ledge with its whole city ona shelf and you land. That's it.

The transition from the ground seen by airto my feet on the ground, the changefrom my winged like Bird to like birds puttingtheir hands in their pockets to strut awayas if on the earth is on the money like thisI acceptthe spaced wells of the cities sounded out,or, in the glass, my shadow portrait on the lights,even the most darkly changing windowremembered view

from the crash flipping over taking off on water,settling right side up enough to hangme from my seat belt then set downwhere we could swim ashore,

or from the cabin door, the "Stepoff the plane…" into a field deployedovergrown with aimed escort, the cocked rifles'uniforms draped in rounds of ammunitionseeming to arm the trees around that stripin the jungle—

I accept the changefrom thin air, empty handed for all I've seen,from air to the walk away again in all my flesh,accept what I have to leave of flight for feet.