arrival
i touch my face to the oval window,
peering out from my seat in the sky. i am
small, tinier even than a housefly riding
the edge of a cloud. at the bottom
of my sight, cars hug the bending asphalt
roads. city buses lurch & sway, packed
with the people of the world. a freight
train cuts soundlessly through sepia
fields & i feel my fly's forehead wrinkle
at the hard lacework of highways
hammered & human poured, twisting
around earth. how like ants we are,
mapping our routes for food, for children,
for industry. drilling through quiet hills
of sand & clay to get where we want
to go. just now i thought the calm over
the mountains eternal, their moss-green
faces marbled & capped with light. how
finely hewn from here, shaped by the quick
fingers of rain. rain who drums the ground
& sharpens the pass of wind. wind whose
hundred names comb the treetops, sweep
the rocks soft. how still & silent the stretch
of earth from here. no tunnel dug through.
nor forest fired or felled, no thrusting
pumpjack. nothing moves save my eye,
its long slow blink wanting not to miss
any life under the mist. i press further
into the glass. i can't hear them, but know
the trees creak & moan 30,000 feet below,
leaf-floor clicking with the errands of insects.
where light & water are god of the living
& earthworms speak in strides, draw breath
through their skin, touch their faces to dirt.