Poetry at Sangam
Poetry at Sangam showcases poetry in English and translations as well as essays on poetics and news of new releases.
Entire chapters are devoted to wings,
respiration, chemical processes. The nature
of a body in flight or in distress. Lift
and thrust. The angle of descent.
I once studied the mechanics of flight
for months, taking lessons in my home town.
I checked the altimeter, the wet compass,
considered the angle of attack,
the drift and the downwash,
the shadow speed of the aircraft.
The past and the future
disappeared around me, sloughed away
as the plane rose higher into the blue haze
of morning, rising until I discovered
a kind of fluid suspension, that weightless
separation from expectation, the invisible
tethers of my life loosening and slipping
back to Earth as I flew forward,
riding the beam as the old pilots say,
while the Earth, heliotropic creature that it is,
curved away from me and toward the sun
in its determined orbit, as I flew
on VSR, the dawn to port, the day moon
to starboard, the great mysteries
of the universe just in front of me,
signaling from across the great divide.
← Brian Turner