Flight or Fright: 17 Turbulent Tales

The states when they black out and lie there rollingwhen they turn

To something transcontinentalmove bydrawing moonlight out of the great

One-sided stone hung off the starboard wingtipsome sleeper next to

An engine is groaning for coffeeand there is faintly coming in

Somewhere the vast beast-whistle of space. In the galley with its racks

Of traysshe rummages for a blanketand moves in her slim tailored

Uniform to pin it over the cry at the top of the door. As though she blew

The door down with a silent blast from her lungsfrozenshe is black

Out finding herselfwith the plane nowhere and her body taken by the throat

The undying cry of the voidfallinglivingbeginning to be something

That no one has ever been and lived throughscreaming without enough air

Still neatlipstickedstockingedgirdled by regulationher hat

Still onher arms and legs in no worldand yet spaced also strangely

With utter placid rightness on thin airtaking her timeshe holds it

In many placesand now, still thousands of feet from her death she seems

To slowshe develops interestshe turns in her maneuverable body

To watch it. She is hung high up in the overwhelming middle of things in her

Selfin low body-whistling wrapped intenselyin all her dark dance-weight

Coming down from a marvellous leapwith the delaying, dumfounding ease

Of a dream of being drawnlike endless moonlight to the harvest soil

Of a central state of one’s countrywith a great gradual warmth coming

Over herfloatingfinding more and more breath in what she has been using

For breathas the levels become more humanseeing clouds placed honestly

Below her left and rightriding slowly toward themshe clasps it all

To her and can hang her hands and feet in it in peculiar waysand

Her eyes opened wide by wind, can open her mouth as widewider and suck

All the heat from the cornfieldscan go down on her back with a feeling

Of stupendous pillows stacked under herand can turnturn as to someone

In bedsmile, understood in darknesscan go awayslantslide

Off tumblinginto the emblem of a bird with its wings half-spread

Or whirl madly on herselfin endless gymnastics in the growing warmth

Of wheatfields rising toward the harvest moon.There is time to live

In superhuman healthseeing mortal unreachable lights far down seeing

An ultimate highway with one late priceless car probing itarriving

In a square townand off her starboard arm the glitter of water catches

The moon by its one shaken sidescaled, roaming silverMy God it is good

And evillying in one after another of all the positions for love

Makingdancingsleepingand now cloud wisps at her no

Raincoatno matterall small towns brokenly brighter from inside

Cloudshe walks over them like rainbursts out to behold a Greyhound

Bus shooting light through its sidesit is the signal to go straight

Down like a glorious diverthen feet firsther skirt stripped beautifully

Upher face in fear-scented clothsher legs deliriously barethen

Arms outshe slow-rolls oversteadies outwaits for something great

To take control of hertrembles near feathersplanes head-down

The quick movements of bird-necks turning her headgold eyes the insight-

eyesight of owls blazing into the hencoopsa taste for chicken overwhelming

Herthe long-range vision of hawks enlarging all human lights of cars

Freight trainslooped bridgesenlarging the moon racing slowly

Through all the curves of a riverall the darks of the midwest blazing

From above. A rabbit in a bush turns whitethe smothering chickens

Huddlefor over them there is still time for something to live

With the streaming half-idea of a long stoopa hurtlinga fall

That is controlledthat plummets as it willsturns gravity

Into a new condition, showing its other side like a moonshining

New Powersthere is still time to live on a breath made of nothing

But the whole nighttime for her to remember to arrange her skirt

Like a diagram of a battightly it guides hershe has this flying-skin

Made of garmentsand there are also those sky-divers on tvsailing

In sunlightsmiling under their gogglesswapping batons back and forth

And He who jumped without a chute and was handed one by a diving

Buddy. She looks for her grinning companionwhite teethnowhere

She is screamingsinging hymnsher thin human wings spread out

From her neat shouldersthe air beast-crooning to herwarbling

And she can no longer behold the huge partial form of the worldnow

She is watching her country lose its evoked master shapewatching it lose

And gainget back its houses and peopleswatching it bring up

Its local lightssingle homeslamps on barn roofsif she fell

Into water she might livelike a divercleavingperfectplunge

Into anotherheavy silverunbreathableslowingsaving

Element: there is waterthere is time to perfect all the fine

Points of divingfeet togethertoes pointedhands shaped right

To insert her into water like a needleto come out healthily dripping

And be handed a Coca-Colathere they arethere are the waters

Of lifethe moon packed and coiled in a reservoirso let me begin

To plane across the night air of Kansasopening my eyes superhumanly

Brightto the damned moonopening the natural wings of my jacket

By Don Lopermoving like a hunting owl toward the glitter of water

One cannot just falljust tumble screaming all that timeone must use

Itshe is now through with allthrough allcloudsdamphair

Straightenedthe last wisp of fog pulled apart on her face like wool revealing

New darksnew progressions of headlights along dirt roads from chaos

And nighta gradual warminga new-made, inevitable world of one’s own

Countrya great stone of light in its waiting watersholdhold out

For water: who knows when what correct young woman must take up her body

And flyand head for the moon-crazed inner eye of midwest imprisoned

Waterstored up for her for yearsthe arms of her jacket slipping

Air up her sleeves to goall over her? What final things can be said

Of one who starts her sheerly in her body in the high middle of night

Airto track down water like a rabbit where it lies like life itself

Off to the right in Kansas? She goes towardthe blazing-bare lake

Her skirts neather hands and face warmed more and more by the air

Rising from pastures of beansand under herunder chenille bedspreads

The farm girls are feeling the goddess in them struggle and rise brooding

On the scratch-shining posts of the beddreaming of female signs

Of the moonmale blood like ironof what is really said by the moan

Of airliners passing over them at dead of midwest midnightpassing

Over brush firesburning out in silence on little hillsand will wake

To see the woman they should bestruggling on the rooftree to become

Stars: for her the ground is closerwater is nearershe passes

Itthen banksturnsher sleeves fluttering differently as she rolls

Out to face the east, where the sun shall come up from wheatfields she must

Do something with waterfly to itfall in itdrink itrise

From itbut there is none left upon earththe clouds have drunk it back

The plants have sucked it downthere are standing toward her only

The common fields of deathshe comes back from flying to falling

Returns to a powerful crythe silent scream with which she blew down

The coupled door of the airlinernearlynearly losing hold

Of what she has doneremembersremembers the shape at the heart

Of cloudfashionably swirlingremembers she still has time to die

Beyond explanation. Let her now take off her hat in summer air the contour

Of cornfieldsand have enough time to kick off her one remaining

Shoe with the toesof the other footto unhook her stockings

With calm fingers, noting how fatally easy it is to undress in midair

Near deathwhen the body will assume without effort any position

Except the one that will sustain itenable it to riselive

Not dienine farms hover closewideneight of them separate, leaving

One in the middlethen the fields of that farm do the samethere is no

Way to back offfrom her chosen groundbut she sheds the jacket

With its silver sad impotent wingssheds the bat’s guiding tailpiece

Of her skirtthe lightning-charged clinging of her blousethe intimate

Inner flying-garment of her slip in which she rides like the holy ghost

Of a virginsheds the long windsocks of her stockingsabsurd

Brassierethen feels the girdle required by regulations squirming

Off her: no longer monobuttockedshe feels the girdle fluttershake

In her handand floatupwardher clothes rising off her ascending

Into cloudand fights away from her head the last sharp dangerous shoe

Like a dumb birdand now will drop insoonnow will drop

In like thisthe greatest thing that ever came to Kansasdown from all

Heightsall levels of American breathlayered in the lungs from the frail

Chill of space to the loam where extinction slumbers in corn tassels thickly

And breathes like rich farmers counting: will come along them after

Her last superhuman actthe last slow careful passing of her hands

All over her unharmed bodydesired by every sleeper in his dream:

Boys finding for the first time their loins filled with heart’s blood

Widowed farmers whose hands float under light covers to find themselves

Arisen at sunrisethe splendid position of blood unearthly drawn

Toward cloudsall feel somethingpass over them as she passes

Her palms over her long legsher small breastsand deeply between

Her thighsher hair shot loose from all pinsstreaming in the wind

Of her bodylet her come openlytrying at the last second to land

On her backThis is itTHIS

All those who find her impressed

In the soft loamgone downdriven well into the image of her body

The furrows for miles flowing in upon her where she lies very deep

In her mortal outlinein the earth as it is in cloudcan tell nothing

But that she is thereinexplicableunquestionableand remember

That something broke in them as welland began to live and die more

When they walked for no reason into their fields to where the whole earth

Caught herinterrupted her maiden flighttold her how to lie she cannot

Turngo awaycannot movecannot slide off it and assume another

Positionno sky-diver with any grin could save herhold her in his arms

Plummet with herunfold above her his wedding silksshe can no longer

Mark the rain with whirling women that take the place of a dead wife

Or the goddess in Norwegian farm girlsor all the back-breaking whores

Of Wichita. All the known air above her is not giving up quite one

Breathit is all goneand yet not deadnot anywhere else

Quitelying still in the field on her backsensing the smells

Of incessant growth try to lift hera little sight left in the corner

Of one eyefadingseeing something wavelies believing

That she could have made itat the best part of her brief goddess

Stateto watergone in headfirstcome out smilinginvulnerable

Girl in a bathing-suit adbut she is lying like a sunbather at the last

Of moonlighthalf-buried in her impact on the earthnot far

From a railroad trestlea water tankshe could see if she could

Raise her head from her modest holewith her clothes beginning

To come down all over Kansasinto busheson the dewy sixth green

Of a golf courseone shoeher girdle coming down fantastically

On a clothesline, where it belongsher blouse on a lightning rod:

Lies in the fieldsin this fieldon her broken back as though on

A cloud she cannot drop throughwhile farmers sleepwalk without

Their women from housesa walk like falling toward the far waters

Of lifein moonlighttoward the dreamed eternal meaning of their farms

Toward the flowering of the harvest in their handsthat tragic cost

Feels herself gogo towardgo outwardbreathes at last fully

Notand trieslessoncetriestriesAH, GOD—