We kept pace with the sun across a continent
Incubating plans and dreams that for a time
Had the power to hold back hour after hour of sunset
Until weary from the effort of holding us
(And all the hopes we carried) up
Our plane dropped us from the sky
Through strange landscapes of clouds and mist
We fell as newly hatched robins do
Nudged early from the nest, yet
Somehow we managed to softly settle
Next to the little propeller planes
Who having tested their wings in the wind and the snow
Daily are braver than anything Boeing
Or me

In the grey, in the lovely, in the almost rain
Seattle huddled against the shore and listened to the sound
The wind made over the mountains and the lake
Whirring, like propellers, coming and going daily, hourly
Yet no part of the city, not even the bridges, the high-rises,
The homes looking down on other homes further down the hilltop
Or by the lake,
Not even the tourists who paid to stand atop the Space Needle
Stood tall enough to peer above the clouds
And see where the sound was coming from or going to
(Perhaps across the water where sat Olympia
Sipping cappuccino, warm in her mountain cabin
Watching her pot of eggs boiling above the fire
While the cascading snowmelt of Rainier
Sublimated into the clouds outside her window
Like mist into mist)

Eastward, from on top of hills of crushed velvet torn
The King of Yakima looked down upon his valley and smiled
For the coffee stands constructed on the corners of groceries,
And carwashes, and beside the fishmongers
And he was glad as he sipped his tall double fat cup sans crème
That his random coffee generator, so effusively, had dispensed
And he was glad also for his subjects
The vines and the trees they had planted
Grew a few inches taller this year
And helped to fill his wine-rack with every variety of red and white
While the trees themselves blossomed and filled every yard
With the same variety of colors
But he was especially glad for his air conditioner
And for the miracle of irrigation
In ways words cannot espresso well as comfort
Speaks for itself in the desert

And while I'm on the subject of the King and his subjects
One, I recall, her eyes
How they sparkled like pale blue jewels
From my chair, how could I have known?
And was it any wonder that when we met
I wanted to kiss her?
I remember when I first took flight
How the sun kissed the Atlantic,
The sharks cruised around the shallow reefs,
The waves flowed over the submerged shore
Like one hand caressing a smaller hand
And I felt I knew how to do those things
Until she asked me how
I could know

Curled up in my blanketed nest
Stretched out across three seats
Assuming a continent I had seen before
Through a small window, obscured by clouds
I tried to sleep like the coming dawn
The plane tried to hasten
The stars, I could not see them
Though I imagined they still flickered like pale jewels
Or like the many tiny lights overhead
Pushed on and off by so many quick hands
That I wondered
How many of them knew

Reaching for proof
Still, in the camera, undeveloped
I wanted to pull out pictures
And just
Run my hands through her hair
Like water, returning, through sand
I had been reading Blue Angel then
And thinking of the eggs
And how they didn't hatch
And her, always her
Of course I knew
Then
As the plane began to shake the nest
And dropped us from the sky again

5/8/01