On the way to Denver
From above, the clouds are always white. Color
is a construct. Words are bricks & mortar, studs
& drywall. Methane is invisible to the human eye.
Even this little bit of Nebraska, which may be Kansas,
is more than I can take in, cloud-covered or not,
the neat plots of fields & roads, wheat already green,
woods along the rivers still blurred & gray.
The arrow of an airstrip pointed northwest. The key
to shalom is dismantling: racism, patriarchy,
oligarchy, capitalism, and the use of vast abstractions
as markers of the so-called real world. From above
the clouds are pale and pure as a vast range
of my mother’s mashed potatoes. And now
they are rising to meet us, we will learn how thin
they are, how empty, how full. They will hold
us up, they will let us down, the wheels will shriek
& bite into the irrevocable tarmac, the harsh
& fine & gritty surface of our days.
