1900
- 1900
Dolores Hayden, Irene Tate, Wright Brothers, Kitty Hawk
Irene Tate, postmaster’s daughter, Kitty Hawk, North Carolina
Wilbur unrolled white French sateencut on the bias for strength, lined
with fifteen narrow pockets for the ash ribs.He borrowed my mother’s sewing machine,
shortened the cloth to match the white pine spars.We came down here for wind and sand,
and we have got them, said Orville.Everything from dead calm to a whole gale.
In twelve attempts one day, Wilbur madebarely two minutes in the air. Late October,
the weather turned. The glider discarded,Wilbur promised to return with a new machine.
Next summer, he told us,so salvage anything you want.
My mother stayed up late, runningthe Singer, stitching Sunday dresses
for my sister Pauline and me.We shimmered when we wore those wings.
The ribs and spars my fatherfed to the fire that winter. [End Page 142]
DOLORES HAYDEN’s poetry collections are American Yard and Nymph, Dun, and Spinner. Her work appears in journals and anthologies including Poetry, Shenandoah, Raritan, The Best American Poetry 2009, Slate, the Kenyon Review, and the Yale Review. She’s received The Writer Magazine/Emily Dickinson Award from the Poetry Society of America, the Firman Houghton Award, the Barbara Bradley Award, and the Boyle/Farber Award from the New England Poetry Club. Her books on the history of American landscapes include Building Suburbia and The Power of Place. She is a professor of American Studies at Yale University, where she teaches a seminar called Poets’ Landscapes.*
First appearance in Ecotone.
