The World From Upper Air
errol miller
These are the nights
we have saved for and dreamed of
nothing can keep us in
we have come to exclude the bad times from paradise
come to paper the glass walls of the Aircastle
with pumpkin seed and lime-green neon
soon we shall grow for us a son
and we shall select cheese from one hoop
knowing there is no ham in that
no harm in pretending
for after all life is a closed circle
with body-juices locked in, each company
closing as expected, bankrupt on plastic money
coming to believe in tall grasses with hidden zebras
we are all country boys stalking wild exotic bumblebees
in the cool of the evening it can never be peaceful
everything is changing, Papa trading in his tragic story
maybe he'll come back soon in another excited dawn
thick with seagulls and morning mist and sunshine
spilling out upon Oxford's creme-stucco square
the universe moving through Fargo
to the Snake River, encamped in all of us
on the prairie racks of weathered bones
ferment under tumbleweed, we
have been very proud of our past
but it will be a long time
before we are really free, free
of the earth's grasses, the earth's pull
down Highway 80 tall towers soar over Texas
next door the young wife fulfilled again
night in another house for now
dusk shrouding the cathedral, the Opera House
blue light from an unknown source
over the Eastern seaboard.
