The Fire Landscape: Poems

Skill

Skill Just often enough somebody comes back From certain death, enough to make us think We’re the ones who will go on, like my friend Thrown clear of the T-Bird that exploded On impact, the neighbor’s boy who survived Ten minutes under cold water, even Myself skidding into a four-wheel drift Across a low median and both lanes Of oncoming, rush-hour freeway traffic. Unscathed. Upright. Not miraculous. Not A free fall ten thousand feet to a swamp. Not, the week I rejoined traffic and kept Close escape to myself, the young pilot Bringing in the plane with the blown hatch door, Ferrying a full manifest of ghosts Back to the everyday task of living. Safely on earth, the one in a thousand, He spoke about trying to keep that plane Alive, throttling up, working the small chance Of improvisation while it banked left And dived, drawn sideways and down by its wound. “If I land this thing,” he said to laughter, Was the first phrase of a hurried promise That ended with “all the rest of my life.” And then he started the full-time labor Of silence about how, after those first 63 P 1FINCKE_pages.qxd 5/21/08 9:31 AM Page 63 Minutes of surviving, he knew he would Never again be so skillful, that it Saddened him until he seemed an athlete Just retired, his gratitude so awkward And false he knew this was the first day of The long sentence of dissatisfaction. p64 1FINCKE_pages.qxd 5/21/08 9:31 AM Page 64 ...