I swear to you I have felt the electric connections

This exists only in my memory 

And what I tell you now: 

It is cool. The nightwind blows around me. 

My fingers wrap the mesh of chain-link fence. 

I can smell the metal, smell the grass I'm crushing 

And far-off blooming roses, burnt gasoline, rubber. 

One by one, the airplanes turn 

Then run down the concrete, faster, faster, 

Each plane makes a line of light that bends up at the end, 

Rising, diminishing into a spark 

So small we cannot tell it from the stars. 

Once again
        I walked in summer fields last night 

And watched the lights begin to show in the sky, 

Some of them at first identical to the stars 

But growing brighter, nearer, 

Now clearly seen as planes approaching. 

I thought of other nights and other fields 

And those who stood beside me watching then 

All now dead, everything dead or gone, 

The old airfield
        long abandoned, 

The unknown pilots, crews, 

I can shut my eyes and see them, even now. 

And the sky, the sky that seems eternal 

And so full of fire, 

The sky is full of lies. 

Stars
        burnt out
        centuries ago 

Whose light still reaches us, and so says science, 

But I swear to you 

I have felt the electric connections 

And I have seen them reaching out, gleaming and strong,
Interlinking, weaving, arching up and out,
Forward and back in time and space
From me to you, from you to me,
Crossing continents and years and seas,
And I have heard and sensed you
And I know you to be there
Tomorrow or today
And how can I refuse
From now until my final breath
Spinning out these signals and these words
Connecting me to you?
I have spent days sunk in despair
Grieving for those I've loved
Walking through empty rooms alone
Feeling presences just beyond sight,
Just beyond hearing,
Hoping and fearing what    a sudden turn around corner
Might reveal (might not reveal).
I have felt each living link begin to wither,
A        feeble signal sometimes coming back,
Sometimes fading away.
Light, sound, energy, matter,
All change but go on.
I have walked the        battlefields,
Old settlements, mounds, medicine wheels,
Trying to find some trace in the ruins,
Trying to catch some signal
That will help me understand,
That will tell me what to do.
Where Etowah Mound rises from the bottomland,
The cornfields tremble with the presence
Of those who came before.
This is a country full of the unseen,
Sounds of birds and flutes
And smell of woodsmoke on the wind
Where no campfire ought to be,
Flowers springing from cracks in the pavement,
Thoughts coming unbidden into unlikely heads:
"Save the whale. Save the planet. Save the snail darter." 

Has time a bend in it?
Nothing is lost, they say,
But all shall be transformed.
High above the mists of morning, out of my sight,
I can hear geese calling
As they pass overhead on their way home.

 

[Jean Starr {Untermeyer} {1886-1970} 'Flight', from The Best American Poetry 1996, edited by Adrienne Rich]