POEM - Planes

Sometimes I think the planes that fly overhead
Ones that have really long necks like ostriches -
Will take me to imaginary places.
747s with swollen heads that
Converse in the language of Thunder and Thrust,
That carry small villages of people the way
The great fish carried Jonah in its gullet.
There are planes with choppy propellers that bounce
Around like a Coney Island roller coaster.
There are the foreign ones with fancy colored tails
And strange symbols written on the fuselage.
There are the ordinary ones that look like Jesus' cross
Above, as if offering Jesus’ love.
On my roof, I often kept my 9:00 o'clock
Rendezvous with the Supersonic Concorde,
Pterodactyl of a shrunken Atlantic,
This caped bird was like a kite stuck fast to the
Flat gray ozone blanket over JFK
With wide triangular arms spread, scooping sky,
With that crooked nose that dangled and sniffed out
The scents of New York, Paris or London.

These days I pilot my planes on paper in
Words, with which I struggle to navigate through
The foggiest weather, or most grave ice storms
Praying that these planes on paper will ascend
Past the limits of impossibly thin air;
Throguh the limits of my childhood’s end.