On the longest day
I lie back in meadow grass,
dry and yeasty;
it prickles my back.
Clouds slide along
on prevailing westerlies,
merge and dissipate,
a shifting menagerie.
Behind a silver plane
a contrail dissolves
like vanishing ink;
sun glints off the fuselage.
In the climatized cabin
securely strapped passengers
packed like Pringles in a tube
look out portholes for landmarks.
From even higher
the blue planet could be
a glass ornament, surrounded
by the flimsy gauze of angel wings.
How small it looks,
the astronauts remark.
How small its spinning
in the void of space.
