Flight at The Top of the World

We fly over desolate marshlands
as a transient moon
swims beneath our fragile wings.
Drifting clouds swallow us incessantly
each in turn
spewing us back into the clear wilderness air.

Far off in the blackness of the Northern sky
an airport beacon flashes blue assurances.
The tundra below seems oblivious to our humming motor
and the meld of metal and minds that trails behind it.

I can feel a thousand eyes watch from the marshes below.
And always the moon
slipping across the vacillating water
then hiding itself in a rise of brush and wasteland.

Isolated in this space
where moon and earth devour inner strengths
I feel I am at the mercy mechanical wings
and unseen forces.
And I sense the urgency
in the blue light
that beacons.


Lorraine Geiger
First Place Category 34
NFSPS National Contest 1991
Published: Florida State Poets Association anthology 11