The helicopter circles
low as geese. My son
waves at machinery
but also at the moon clear
as a pistol in midday sun.
The world’s confused again
about the plan. Would like
a paraphrase and an addendum:
our prayers be recorded
in case of discrepancies.
We demand a lot of God,
but to be fair, He demands
a lot of us, too. What kind
of an invention is war?
Returning to dust
and the whole lot of it.
It’s a lot. But the geese look
like billboards for victory
against the sky, and we’re told
that feels good, i.e. winning,
i.e. I want my son to know
a world where nothing
is louder than the wind
he mimics each morning,
raising his head to find
the manmade wonders
among the God-made ones.
Together, it’s a lot of wonders.
Erica Wright the author of seven books, including the poetry collection All the Bayou Stories End with Drowned (Black Lawrence Press 2017) and the essay collection Snake (Bloomsbury 2020). Her poems have appeared in The Rumpus, Crazyhorse, Denver Quarterly, Gulf Coast, New Orleans Review, and elsewhere. She was the poetry editor at Guernica Magazine for more than a decade. Website: www.ericawright.org