To My Husband, Flying over Afghanistan
a cento
The pilot alone knows
the chill of closed eyelids
in the glaring white gap;
the wired minefield;
the stars in active orbit.
And all is from wreck, here, there—
the hot black dunes in the air.
Now I am safe in the deep V of a weekday;
how fibrous and incidental it all seems—
the Avon lady trekking door to door
the paper sacks stuffed full of oranges,
obscenely jewel-toned
while the whole cathedral crashes at your back.