DESCENDING INTO SAINT LOUIS

"He'll be going after Crossfield soon, won't he?"
"No, he won't; He'll be going after that demon that lives out there in the thin air."

--From the film The Right Stuff

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As the great plane ladders its way into the sky over Saint Louis,

A burst of speed and a shuddered slide to a new altitude, a different sky,

Sinking into a level of gray thick and palpable, the light

From the sky above stretches in fingers to peel away a veneer,

Just enough to let in a slick film of sun. I am a poet

Travelling to visit a philosopher

Looking for answers. What I might find

In Modesto, California

Is a mystery, and I mean to work it out. The rumble of the engines, the slip

And quiver of aeronautics fascinates me. I have stared out the window since

The descent began. Perhaps the slug thick gray

Of the air we are planing through affects the airbrushed Yuppie wife beside me

As I fear it should me. The taste of the sky, the time and distance between

Charlotte and Sacramento, the book

I have lost interest in, the great gray gloom

Suddenly opening up into a free Saint Louis sky, distract me

From her round breasts under fawn pullover and brushed

Suede jacket. She is not my wife,

And she certainly is no philosopher. Her breasts

Will have to wait while I worry out

The wordless audacity of a stranger on a plane

The wonderful shudders and slips

Of a great bird dropping into an unfamiliar sky, all the while wondering

If I truly understand, more than she possibly can,

The logic behind the legends

Of monsters in the sea; spirits

In the sky; the tales

Of proud Ulysses; the demon

In the thin air

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