Bozeman Airport

Snow is falling everywhere, even
up from the tarmac in the trembling
around the engine barrels.
Two men in earmuffs in a cherry picker
aim pink foam from a fire hose;
the wing melts down to its metal.
An inch from my nose the plexiglass
ticks and stipples into archipelagoes
of water. One of the men waves a broom
as if gravity were a theory
and we slide back, slow in the weather,
to turn. Runway lights like blue matchheads.
The sky kneels down. Bits of sleet
fly off the engines like sparks,
crazy in the winglights. Then a jerky hurtling,
faster, till the airfield gives way
to sheer air. Nothing outside
has a name, the Bridger Range invisible,
ranches big as counties – gone.
No cottonwoods to give the river away,
no river. No earth, no edge. Not one fact
to tell how far there is to fall.

From As If Gravity Were a Theory (Cider Press, 2006).
This poem first appeared in Zone 3 and later appeared in
Another Way to Begin (Finishing Line Press, 2006).
Used here with the author’s permission.