Contrails

[nny]

I

The grinding roar of each plane hooks

sharp barbed rusty wire

fish hooks lassos

corner catches the point of my chin

and turns my head;

each time it fills the sky with dread,

each time impossibly louder

each time the end of the world

until the next.



II

Where the world ended, there was sky

Only we, small and cruel and self-involved,

curled in on ourselves, gravity-

pulled everything close. We

held the sea and cooed at its

impossible majesty and mystery

and endless breadth and history

because we, jealous, cannot weave

the impossible unending depths of sky

between our fingers.



III

Ugly white contrail stitches

Criss-cross and limit the length of blue

We tell ourselves sutures

and not

a

cage.



IV

Statistics are with us but

history echoes with

the crash and the burn and the

heat and the light and the

impossibility of flight

and what is the betting on

this one’s wax wings?

(Yet still our chins are caught;

Yet still we look up).


V

You enter the room

and fish hooks; barbed wire.

You fill the sky.