Night Flights
Into the indigo sky
the planes climb
at regular intervals,
like clean, slow-motion
signal flares
fired by a punctilious soldier
fighting a decorous war.
From this distance,
the planes’ engines
are little pendant earrings,
swingless beneath
ridiculous cantilevered ears,
their screams muffled,
straining furiously
to hoist their ponderous freights
into sky and night,
locked in a slanted tug of war
with a force unseen
bent on reeling them back
like renegade kites.
For a few moments,
the outcomes of the duels
appear far from certain,
the planes slow and labored
on their ascent,
seemingly disheartened
by so much space.
But they keep climbing,
plowing dark furrows
in dark cloddish sky,
slipping gravity’s
last rapacious grasp.
They disappear behind
shadowy fleece,
edging them with
with red and green lights,
reappearing now and again
in jagged tears in the cloud-quilt,
sightings of
mythical birds
in surreptitious flight.
Rising,
rising,
their lights recede,
blink out,
and are gone.
The sight of these
night planes
always gives me
the feeling
I’m being left behind,
by them,
and by the spirit
of Saint-Exupéry,
that rider of ancient planes,
that cloud-hopping wanderer
entombed in a starry sky,
foe of inertia
who was privy
to the danger
of flying,
and the greater danger of
not going.
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