Flying Out

This morning makes no shadow, compresses 
with its grayness and that knot 
I learned to grow against winter 
long ago in Wyoming. 

A few sweeps of green 
lap at the white altitudes of the Rockies. 
Mountain ranges flow like ice streams. 
Nothing beneath me looks random, 
though I am told all seeming stillness 
and order are chaos, the silence below 
filled with sound we don’t hear.

I wake from a doze 
having dreamt something 
about cellos and white birds 
which leaves me on the verge of tune, 
humming . . . the mind lightnings to places 
immense and secluded, but specific 
as electrons of our cells 
once inside a star. 

Last week my daughter, the mathematician, 
told me each breath we take 
contains some particle from that first one 
we took. Exotic bodies of animals 
drew close, what we need to breathe 
hooked to common respirations. 

Someone waits for me now, miles 
yet just minutes ahead. 
We’ll meet at the gate after landing 
and everything for those moments 
will turn significant—a hint of music 
in a collision of particles. . . . 

And I remember one afternoon alone 
when breathing came suddenly painful: 
a strange torment in the need 
to inhale. Senses dilated 
to a higher power. . . . 
Then it was gone—and like so much 
of living, never explained in the body memory, 
the bellows-hymn of the lungs.