Aerial Muse: poems Read online

  Red On Gray

  Slanting through the oval

  window of this jet,

  a sunbeam turns a plastic cup

  of cranberry juice into

  a crystal goblet of melted rubies

  – hot magic –

  a fragment of mythology

  on the gray shelf of a long,

  ordinary day.

  No Hands

  Who hasn’t dreamed of being

  that seabird

  floating over sand and surf,

  each feather quivering

  in the ensconcing,

  salt-sharpened rush?

  You arc, dip, rise, and ride out

  over gray-green water

  that ripples along and occasionally curls

  over the sea wall.

  You hang in the wind,

  nearly still in its force-flow,

  and glance down at some person

  rooted in the sand

  and gazing up at you,

  dreaming.

  Something More

  The right words come -- if they come --

  when consciousness tilts into light

  as bank swallows flow

  in the feel of what no one sees,

  banking off eddies of air in air.

  The cross-angle of your gaze

  through slanting October light

  reveals something more

  in what is always there:

  silver shavings gleaming

  on bird bath surface

  or a honey-colored luminosity poured

  over the new leather

  of drying orange peels.

  Unhinged

  The holding pattern

  loses hold, and we fly oblong

  arcing into whole oceans

  of sky – uncharted

  unheld, unhinged

  from the pivot like

  a door swinging loose

  and walking away.

  About the Author

  Scott Thompson is a poet, non-fiction author, editor, photographer, and education foundation officer. He holds a BA in English Literature from Principia College and an MA in English Literature from Northeastern University. He lives with his wife, daughter, and cat in Glen Rock, New Jersey. Praise for his first book, Leading From the Eye of the Storm: Spirituality and Public School Improvement (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), includes the following endorsement from author Parker J. Palmer: “The America I love now suffers from a toxic brew of fear, cynicism, and false bravado that is taking a terrific toll on everything from individual to institutional life. If we are to deal with the spiritual emptiness behind all this – and find responses that honor the needs of a pluralistic democracy – our public schools must become places where questions of meaning and purpose are taken seriously. Here is a superbly written book that will help educational leaders step up to that challenge. Using tools ranging from poetry, to social analysis, to interviews with change agents, to case studies of transformation, Scott Thompson makes a powerful contribution to our understanding of the spiritual depths that are hidden, but not lost, in our individual and collective lives.”

  Acknowledgements

  I am deeply grateful to my friend David Andrews and my wife June Thompson, who carefully read and commented on the typescript for this chapbook. Their feedback was invaluable. I should also acknowledge that the poem "What I'd Say to William Stafford About 'Ask Me'" was originally published in my first book, Leading From the Eye of the Storm (Rowman & Littlefield Education, 2005).

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