I saw such beauty, under the full moon's reaching rays,
and above the blanketing of clouds, on my flight home
from Autumn’s Baires, over the vertical length of the equator.

First, when I opened my window cover
after trying to sleep and only dozing fitfully,
around 2:00 am, I thought I saw a round, lit spaceship
diving down to earth with a quick disappearing flash.
I leaned, scrunched up, to gather more images, and
to watch the plane's passing through nothing
but the height of air, amazed at the concreteness
of 'space' traveling. There was a pair of star-eyes,
slanted and steady, which approved of the presence of life
far from their origin. There was a bright star-entity
leading the moon in a dance of tiny increments of movement.

Then, there came a tiny streak of fire, shooting at an angle,
into the clouds, which rushed up to greet the plane, creating
a huge, glowing halo around the moon. A few minutes later,
the ethereal vision resided back into the crystallized vapors
of opaque adhesion. I saw a shooting star plunge straight down,
and, upon contact with the atmospheric cloudbed, it exploded,
with a green shower of sparks I've never seen before,
possibly due to being positioned below, on the earth,
and not above the world.

I wanted to touch the altitude, with its freeness of attitude,
but my hand bumped into the window's encasement. So,
as my body cramped and screamed with discomfort,
and my left face and ear ached and throbbed, and as my feet
felt painfully sensitive to the touch of metal
and each other, I let my mind wander into
the wonder of contemplation, making the moments pass
with more ease, so that the feeling of the need
to go crazy with the stupidity of forced people-design
of immovable, drawn-out-air-traveling time subsided.
And, in the proceeding, agonizingly-long hours, the skies
and slowly arising sun showed me more wonders
belonging to space, soothing my mind.

Erin Elizabeth Kelly-Moen
© Copyright 4/26/05