1.
Out of round, it ascends
the early air,
the window of the car
that takes me to LaGuardia.
As a stone skips on water,
it touches moments months apart.
2.
Have you, from 30,000’,
seen it at day’s edge?
Out of its element, so pale
the blue of astronauts shows through,
you could well prefer the desert below
scored by roads, or how a river’s folds
show water’s sidelong slide to gravity,
the deep reversals of its getting there.
3.
I know it won’t bear one more metaphor,
having been the thing in easy reach
of a thousand generations,
but it is high and bright and half
tonight. The stars we know as morning
dim in its government.
And here on the floor the very light.
