Classic Poem

Here at twenty-thousand feet,
cross-legged, window seat,
the clouds like lily pads, replete,
on a lake made of air, made of light.

I sit where Li Po never could have sat,
nor his river merchant's wife, in her garden hat,
looking long and long, still longer after that,
at the river transforming into night.

Here on the boundaries of time and flight,
I cannot glean what gave her world its weight, its light,
what held her, window-lonely, in the night,
what kept her waiting for her love to appear.

Here the riveted engine mount where birds can
be drawn to their deaths, the universal symbol for man
crossed out, red circle, diagonal band
across his heart. No human welcome here.

Here my merchant heart, Li Po within my chest,
that wants to leap, an errant bird, outside this floating nest,
this heart, this sucking engine that races without rest,
this heart toward which no human can come near.











From Poetry Magazine, September 2006. Used with permission.