Flight

i.
The wings caught and held
and the landing strip
became a swath of gray
cut through green,
the control tower
a racer’s flag
waving us on
up over lumbermills
piles of sawdust
logs corralled like matchsticks
in the bay.
Then inland
over a patchwork of fields
sheep like white tufts
toy trucks filled with hay.
Out over the wrinkled blue hide
of the sea
gulls flapping below
and our own winged shadow
gliding, gliding
over seal-covered rocks
over the waves’ white froth.

ii.
Farther out, the blue deepened
and the land was gone.
The radio’s lifeline frayed into static,
but we flew like two women in a dream
rising up at last.

iii.
Earhart must have known this joy.
Not the boy-man testing the wings
his father dabbed on with wax,
but a woman, alone in the cockpit,
gauging the engine’s roar
at home with compass and maps
the scent of leather and sweat.
And, yes, she, too, went down,
but first she flew.