Morning Edition

Garrulous mornings, dynamic
departures from the take-off of night,
mouths filled with words that snap
like a parachute behind a fighter
pilot landing on an aircraft carrier. Stop,
I think you misheard that. I think
it's an Eastern European high pressure
area working on my nerves with signs
of sun beneath the still-closed
sluice of day, as the machinery
trembles before the grand opening
and the sun maneuvers toward the gates
already ready to enter, soar up, sail out
over the city with the dazzling pomp
of a heat wave. The rooks that spend
the night in the poplars in front of the house
have already flown to the fields,
but in sleep their dark racket was so very
talkative that I imagine it might be
possible to chat with birds
at some wild frequency,
head over heels, at daybreak,
because they run the same missions
at night as in the morning, so to hell
with the goggles and flight suit, let's
file classified reports on the position
of enemies and friends on the Ocean
of Storms and the Sea of Vapors, the Sea
of Dreams and Crises, on the Sea
of Tranquility. How did the moon
get in here? And enemies? Let's talk about
you instead: So what if you're lousy
on the jump? You glide right off
the edge, where there is no end,
and it's a long way down? Now
leapfrog: surely that umbrella
is a parachute? Sometimes
I'm afraid of this mumbling,
these words with missed connections,
from nowhere to nowhere, as if
my head shone ominously with lights
from a pinball machine, but under
whose control? Yours, or his there?
And do you remember Kloss? Ingolf
Mork! The inrun, take-off, flight
and landing: I go to the bathroom,
cold water, shower, splashes
of water like snow from under skis
and the head blown off the pint
into the faces of gawkers. I'd like
to jump that well, too. But something
doesn't want to pass my throat
after the landing: could it be
that the night is dumbstruck, dazed
within me, speechless? Let's
go get a beer.

Copyright © 2008 Andrzej Sosnowski, Benjamin Paloff All rights reserved
from The Literary Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission