Another Night

Puget Sound’s sockeyes,
                       subdivisions       dotting
like Swiss eyelet.

Outside my window seat,
sun hangs

dazed as it did once
over Brazil:

years ago and instantly

too late—
the 747 clipped

the small jet twice,

                          banking
to save.

At that speed,
gravity pulls blood
from the brain.

Passengers may have passed out
before aluminum

before steel

before fuel
                      wheels
  wires
                      purses

suitcases
                        seats.

When I land

we argue over
the little hazards
a marriage is made of.

                                     We make amends—

a date at the Pineapple Inn,
where police are summoned,

we wonder, without reason,
what we’ve done,

but it’s for the man
cooking meth in the next
room.
                  We witness
and promise slow
to say yes to more things,

to be touched
                        by the revolving light,
as they hold the man’s head,
fold him to his fate.

The ocean is streets
out of sight from where we sleep,

where a single wave
starts

thousands of miles away
to spill itself here.

Bubble glide
dazzling above gravity,

above heavy,
a Valhalla for a sec
                                                 soaring
                     over wildflowers

grown wilder, grown free
      near an ocean, a jungle,
                 an airfield, tragedy

stripped back to

the beginning:
                                                 the firmament, the sea.
                 The herbs
                                     and fruit and seed,

the wings.
                                                 The whales.
                                                             The dust. Night

                   divided from day.

From the seasons

                   and trees and beasts.

From crops
                                                 and rain.
Grass, thistles, thorns,

sons and
          daughters

just born.