Approaching the Ground

BY ANGE MLINKO

With a dolly and a zoom, the airbus

Entire Everglades shows us:

Blotchy cloud-shadows thrown

On seepage algae’s overgrown.

Observe—the air we freely breathe

From this height seems to sheath

Earth in miasma. The clouds look

Like dross. The Everglades look

Like dross. Biomass is, essentially, dross.

In Miami, all the gold that could enclose

A woman’s finger, wrist, or neck

Was on display, as if  to deflect

Knowledge of  her own mossiness.

Pretend not to know what this says

About our aspirations to the high life.

Up in the airbus, I see as if

For the first time how a cloverleaf

Turns a highway into a motif

On the margins of a manuscript

Illuminated with a wing that tipped

Itself in asphalt. The story it tells

Wants unstapling into angels,

Heavenly bodies drawn raptly in

On tail winds, touched with halogen.