Beating Erasers

I was sent, more often than most,
to beat the erasers.
I found my niche early
and volunteered to stand alone on the playground,
where I leaned back and clapped like a seal,
watching vocabulary, simple sentences,
fractions and small equations explode into clouds of dust,
literature, science and all of history
going up in a clap.
I liked the smell of it,
the taste, and
I'm sure I ate more chalk
than I ever used at the board.



(1985)

N123JF: Flying at Night with Doc Fowler

There's nothing quite like night from a cockpit,

    "November 1-2-3 Juliet Fox, do you have information Lima?"
    "Juliet Fox, affirmative Lima."

accelerating toward an unseen point, V2, beyond stopping,

    "3 Juliet Fox, taxi into position and hold."
    "Juliet Fox, position and hold."

turbochargers screaming harmony (Lycoming TIO-541-E1C4),

    "King Air 2-4 Tango, contact Ground 1-2-1-niner.  Good day."
    "Good day."

watching needles climb and settle half a needle's width
away from red lines, and that is, manifold pressure 41 inches,
2900 RPM, right on the money, fuel and oil pressures in the green,

    "1-2-3 Juliet Fox, cleared for take-off, make right hand turn out."
    "Juliet Fox, rolling, right hand turn out."

temperatures climbing, lift, gravity, thrust and drag doing battle,

    "Little Rock tower, 4-6 Yankee Echo, downwind, runway 2-2."
    "Yankee Echo, extend downwind, follow 737 on short final, caution wake turbulence."
    "Yankee Echo, extending downwind."

then airborne, the temporary victory, gear up and locked, throttles coming back,
fuel boost off, climbing, banking right, seeing strobes at 2 O'clock,

    "1-2-3 Juliet Fox, you have traffic 2 O'clock, descending from two thousand."
    "Juliet Fox has traffic in sight."
    "Juliet Fox contact Departure 1-2-5-6-5. Good day."
    "1-2-5-6-5.  Good day, sir."

leveling off at 4,500 feet for the short hop, engaging the autopilot, watching instruments,
the perfect stars, the paltry lights of humanity, the Stygian separation,
indicated airspeed 207 knots, the music of Morse code
(Hot...Springs...V-O-R); over Benton, now,
glow of Hot Springs on the horizon,

    "Hot Springs traffic, Duke 1-2-3 Juliet Fox, ten mile final, Runway 2-3."

scattered light carved by the black lakes' void, Hamilton, Catherine,
mixture and props forward, slowing, descending;

    "Hot Springs traffic, Duke 1-2-3 Juliet Fox, five mile final, Runway 2-3."

now key the mic three times, and runway lights come on outlining a rectangular abyss,
like flying into a video game, boost pumps on, flaps at approach, gear down,
(three green), throttles coming back, slowing, descending,

    "Hot Springs traffic, Duke 1-2-3 Juliet Fox, short final, Runway 2-3."

slowing, sinking, over the threshold, throttles all the way back, sinking, sinking,
flare it out, back with the yoke, back, back, back...down and rolling out, hold the nose off,
let it down easy, touch the brakes, touch them, get on them and make that first turnoff.

    "Hot Springs traffic, Duke 1-2-3 Juliet Fox, clear of active."



(1983)

We Read Our Poets from Afar

While at the university,
a grey professor said to me,
"We read our poets from afar,
so we can drive our motorcars
between their drunken lines of wit
and still have room to weave a bit.
We like our poets highly bred,
but gaunt of limb and underfed;
most of all, we like them dead."
Every time I asked, "Why so?"
the old professor shook a no,
"We read our poets from afar..."


(1978)

5-3 Fox is Looking

November 5-2-5-3 Fox, you have traffic at 12 O'clock, two miles, altitude unknown.

     5-3 Fox is looking.

5-3 Fox, the traffic is now 1 O'clock, one mile.

     5-3 Fox is looking.

5-3 Fox, the traffic is 'very close.'

     5-3 Fox...5-3 Fox does not have the traffic.

5-3 Fox, the aircraft passed beneath you, now at your 7 O'clock, one mile, traffic no longer a factor.

     5-3 Fox.



(1998)

Fear and Trembling Leads to Nausea

"Fear and trembling leads to nausea?" she said, hair spilling to one side as she steered the stroller clear of an oncoming skateboard.  "Are you certain?"

"Well, if not, you end up with Wittgenstein," I replied, slanting forward to look at the twins and wiggle my fingers under their chins.

"Not necessarily," she argued, stopping at an intersection, "What about Albert Schweitzer?"

I helped her lower the carriage over the curb, "By way of fear and trembling, I suppose?"

"Why not? That would seem to make more sense than Wittgenstein, or Sartre for that matter."  She nodded to a red Toyota that was inching back out of the crosswalk.

"Well," I walked to the front of the stroller, lifted it over the curb, "perhaps," the twins squinted up at me with their sun soured faces, "but I thought we were talking about existentialism."

"It's a Christian concept," controlling the pram with one deft hand she frowned at me, dabbed white matter from the angle of my eye, and examined her fingertip.

I pushed her hand down, "Come on, honey, are you telling me Nietzsche and Camus were Christians?  Dostoevsky was a Christian?"

An old woman walking with a cane leaned toward the babies as we passed, her smile preceding her face.  "No, but they were reacting to Christianity."

"Against, certainly," I said, smiling, waving at the woman, "we agree, then."

"No, you don't understand me...they were what they were due to a...loathing, I guess, of Christianity," she stopped, rolled hair behind her ears.

"Yes, that's part of it," I said, watching sun eddy up her earring. "I'm agreeing with you."

"No," she reached over the hood, righted one child, "you are not agreeing with me."

"Yes, well maybe not," I conceded, "but here's the library."  I held the door open, and the twins began to cry.


(Arkansas Magazine, Arkansas Democrat, September 6, 1987)

Memucan Pays His Debt

You were too, too harsh.
Atoms failed and flew apart,
imperfectly reassembled,
they stumble through space,
molecules struggle to form,
and there is life somehow.

These children you see
are not their father's,
not their mother's children.
They leech to the leviathan
like citizens of Rome

while we chase after ourselves,
after the all and nothing "I"
as if our roots did not exist
and our seeds were not falling
toward the future.



(Permafrost, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, Fall 1985)