Short Contrail Poems

Gulf of Drilling Rigs
Scared oily birds try to fly
Jet contrail in sky...

Read More

contrails streak the sky
vaporous cotton left by
silver dots going
somewhere, my mind takes flight but
my feet are stuck to the ground
...

Read More

Creamy white cotton puffs
Cover baby blue skies
Creative floating art
Cautioning storms when black
Colorful rainbow gifts
Cumulus wet crystals
Create contrail designs...

Read More

Try as I might,
  to hide from the words

Distant and fleeting,
  they still can be heard

The nouns are a kite,
  lone verb as the tail

Flying inside me,
  my heart their contrail 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: May, 2017)...

Read More

You left me today
Leaving  your contrail in the sky

I saw you off at the airport
Waving even after you turned

Till you disappeared
Yet my legs did not want to move

I could feel your warm breath on my cheek
Now I felt my tears

I watched your contrail in the sky
Until it was dark...

Read More

FROM      A      DISTANCE




Mighty engines are reduced to noiseless up high:

Jet plane like zipper across the blue evening sky,

The expanding contrail splits the violet canvas. 

And night rushes into the black gap and the divas

Of the void of space,  silent flecks  of  glory,

Vast nuclear furnaces, are reduced to pinpoints ivory....

Read More

Grit flies from spinning rubber,
the traffic is edging through roads,
narrowed, by the plowed and pushed aside.

Curb-side snow remains; solid humps turn brown,
in an un-melting light.

A lone chicken hawk circles an iced-over acre
of snaking roadway,

its black track attracts the birds eye,
as if it were the contrail of an elongated rat,
stretching into a bolt- hole of frozen sky....

Read More

As far as the eye can see, cerulean sky
Neither a wispy cloud nor contrail in sight
A perfect picture of infinity will apply,
As far as the eye can see, cerulean sky
Kind of day I have a strong urge to fly
Birds, bees, and butterflies taking flight,
As far as the eye can see, cerulean sky
Neither a wispy cloud nor contrail in sight.

THIRD PLACE WINNER
Written June 29, 2022
Submitted to "Flight Three" Poetry Contest
Sponsored by Chantelle Anne Cooke...

Read More

On a morning
wings launch
into a clifftops
uplift of air
and glide effortlessly
above a distant coast.
 
Tall waves break
into foaming sweeps
up beaches bare
of footprints – a shadow
cuts like a scythe
across ancient sand.
 
Enormous swells
heave upwards where once
clippers sailed
southern ocean gales.
A continent’s vast wound
weeps into the sea.
 
High above, the contrail
of a passing jet
crawls silently across
a cloudless sky.
An emptiness soon
wipes it all away....

Read More