The Flight

            When we lived in Gainesville, our dining room looked out onto the edge of Paynes Prairie State Park. In the poem I imagine a flight that Kim might be imagining:

                      

The Flight

 

From your seat before the window you

lift from your chair and take flight

over Paynes Prairie – low at first,

skimming the barbed wire fence,

avoiding the still vacant blue bird house,

then gliding free, twisting over the grasses.

Startled egrets cock their heads

to look up, and sandhill cranes, yes,

crane their necks to see and cry their

raucous welcome to you, the newcomer.

 

You glide on silent wings over ponds

and marshes, the morning mists lifted,

the sun warm and golden, the breeze

strangely still. You lift yourself on soft

powerful wings, pass the stoic kestrel

standing sentinel on a leafless tree as

meadowlarks rise in alarm, gather, scatter,

and reassemble again in the grasses.

A great blue heron approaches and veers

away. You circle toward distant

                                                       

trees edging the prairie, but no, in a graceful

turn you swerve back toward the house and me,

my coffee frozen inches from my lips, watching,

transfixed, my wife who was suddenly not

at my side eating breakfast. You skim low over

the reeds to check for frogs, then spy the bulls

ambling into the prairie and can’t resist bothering

them into a small stampede. You swoop

through our window, settle into your chair,

smooth your feathers, and nibble your toast.

 

And maybe that’s the answer: Use our imagination to inhabit another person’s world.

 

            The answer? But what was the question?