Bad Birds

I watched four gorgeous jets
swerve from our control,
deviate their sure-flighted paths,
and then fiery blasphemy.

The first reached solidity
a thousand feet up.
Its blunted beak kissed glass
and, for the briefest moment,
two planes appeared to touch,
nose to nose,
the air behind them blurred with heat.

A second jet banked wildly
in a clear blue sky,
slicing steel
with wheels up, flaps retracted,
as if there were no such thing
as solid ground.

Scott Speck
09/19/2001