I look through the telescope and see a boy's hand
open under a broad ribbon of falling water.
The scope was not trained up at the sky
so I was not expecting anything to take my breath away.
* * *
I check my luggage and my enthusiasm at the San Francisco airport annex
where people are so casually flying to Northern California suburbs.
Assimilated, I drink my latté and lounge while I wait for the call to board.
In the air, I glance out the window and distinguish rigid slices into summer earth,
but I will only skim the surface of that pandemic tragedy
because it's useless from up here.
As I pull my eyes back into the plane I graze the place
where propellers should be whirring, and see nothing.
"I'm not supposed to," I think to myself, "while they're spinning."
But how do you know they're really there?
Because you saw them before you got in.
Did you?
Well, no. But the plane would not be flying if they weren't there.
So you've been told.
From now on, I will always check.
And touch them.
God
paints the picture: Me, standing before still, white propellers and putting out my hand. I touch the one that's pointed down, and at the gleam of contact a burst of light fills me with the knowledge of immense, sleeping potential, then swallows me completely.
Outside the airplane window, I can't tell if it's a blur, or the faintest fog on glass, or air being churned like butter, or my confidence penciling them in, or absolute nothingness. They have sent the air hurtling against the wing and stripped me of my Santa Rosa nonchalance
as if it were a black bridle, torn from my heart
and Hope, the Temptress, spreads her arms and beckons me now
away from familiar havens, into the wild.
* * *
Startled, I step away from the telescope.
Across the pond, a family examines the redwood channel
that carries river water to this place.
As they turn to go, their son pulls his arm from the fountain,
wet and glistening to the elbow,
while the water continues to fall, gently and freely.
* * *