by Simon Perchik
It must be the barracks stove
bursting into clouds
--you can't see the coals :the planes
adrift on some last journey
rising toward the sun
and past --each Polestar, all afternoon
rushing toward one another --you don't see
the runway face both north and south
while some lost pilot looks down for flares
sees nothing but the sun
and all the stars at once, a sky
nothing but light and the hand over your eyes.
It happens every summer now, the sky
heats up, your hand
tightens on an invisible circle
--you can't see
but what you believed was the Earth
is just another fire
and that pilot the soft wind would close over
remains a hole, waiting
and these thunderheads banked so far off
from where their rain is needed.
Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. Readers interested in learning more are invited to read Magic, Illusion and Other Realities at www.geocities.com/simonthepoet which site lists a complete bibliography