Sailing the Ocean Air

I like to fly
where the rim of the world
lies white, birthing clouds.

Rim separates blue sky
from mauve earth, a mauve mottled
with deep greens, molded
like potter's clay into wood and glen.
But the cities, man's work, are barely visible.

Water is not endlessly blue like sky.
It darkens where it deepens,
and browns in the shallows
into highways to shore.

Cloudpuff submarines drone mutely
through the invisible sea below us.
As we descend, roadways open up
the almost tactile mass of vegetation
to reveal neat lines of house-boxes,
picture-perfect from a distance.

Rows of cement on the field below
come into view; and borne on the wind
comes the seeding and harvesting
of their crop of journeying souls.

first published in St. Anthony’s Messenger