Seen over the Fields of Cloud
Ringed with a rainbow,
His plane’s shadow far below:
This was vouchsafed him.
Flying into the Unfelt
Huddled in silver
Pinions of his steel eagle,
He drops not down, but
Plummets forward into clouds,
Heavy, level, welcoming.
Blue at Thirty Thousand Feet
High in the world’s head,
Reason and rage curve away
In one distant rim.
Simile of the Airplane
As when a sun-struck
Gleam high above the lake’s blue
Hangs, and then darkens
Into a fleck vanishing
In the graininess of sight . . .
A Bright Light Shines in the West
Evening star so soon?
No. Low in the March sunset,
Turning, a jet lands.
Layers of the Elements
In the grey pools spilt
From cartons along the ground
Reflected swallows
Skim the pale air. Beneath the
Dead milk, a dark motherhood.
Hieroglyphic Before Dark
With his cold candle
He peered through the blind, amazed:
A burning sparrow
Perched on the gray window ledge
Warming something at year end.
The Flight of the Diary
Pages fluttering,
His decomposition book
Alighted in mud.
Hieroglyphic Just at Dark
A bird of the earth
Perches on a motionless
Shadow of dark branch
Along the ground which is the
Fallen shadow of the sky.
Lines of Type Appear to Move
Swallows darkening
The bright page of day—his poem
Hung on the far wall,
Weeping, the poor auspex reads
The little given to him.
By the Night Shore of a Lake
I have put my thought
Into the talkative waves
Like a resting bird.
Lights dance in the dark water:
My love’s on another shore.
Hieroglyphic After Dark
The screech-owl’s shriek stabs
My unseeing, not a cry
Of pain, but of night.
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