Poetry

Forty Thousand Feet, thereabouts

written by: T Perez

Part one of a trip is in the dying of light
The longest thin line of sunset...unbroken by crevice or steeple
A slide rule of orange against slate
And the evaporation of yellow, tannin, and reds blurring together until they collapse back into the thinnest of lines in the west.

The world is truly flat at dusk, no curvature, no slope
Just the razor straight cut into a sky that still glows like a wound
An infection that courses in color against the frigid air and pulses as the night hurries to stitch it up dark.

To the east side of the plane, the sky has long ago healed, darkened and bruised over.

In the morning, quite high above the gash in the ground that pocks the ground in Arizona...the grand canyon is an infectious wound that has gouged the ground. Pale colors towards the outside, though red and inflamed colors close in at the deepest points...still slightly darkened by some disease. And in the still seeping wound, a dark ochre fluid runs through in a meandering course...slowly through the gouges and gorges.

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