Becoming a Lighthouse #1

cold laps the shore
no choice but to step in
stride out, stake my place
transmute into tower

two minutes since I looked
no longer 12:59 now 1:01
I count the difference
between my night and your morning

losing you on the Caspian Sea
where signal ends and I
set my clock to wake when
you are expected to land

how should I feel
when you are flying over
Turkmenistan?

I make my feet melt
into bedrock, desire me
into mortar and stone

I strobe the
surface of the earth

I send a beacon
to your soul

should it be jolted free

then you send pictures of the Hindu Kush
mountains I will never see

 

you find wonders

I’m glad you broke in Aqaba not Benghazi
resort style hotel, manmade island
with security

your voice uneasy wanting to be home for thanksgiving
stranded, describing the intense blue green
of the Red Sea

shards of unsaid stuck in my hand

then your pilot eyes find the nearest wonder
and you walk me
to Petra

where a rose canyon gives you
tea to drink in a cave and I see
the men who made it

 

Pilot Air

A.I.B. and
consequent
articles
lead off:

pilot error

so easy

to say, slips so
easy off

so
easy
off the side
nose over tail

so easy
to say: who knows?

what happens

in the air
where

when thinking fails
there is training
when training fails
there is sky
when sky fails
there is

g r o u n d

 

*These poems are part of a larger collection titled Blue Stars.