Poets, Plums, and Airplanes

So, in the last few days there's been lots of talk of airplanes and poetry. Add to that my poetry buddy Azita and I talking about Yeats and my friend Paul and I discussing airplane poems, and here we are.

Came across this poem and figured I would post it. Not sure it is good, or done, or good and done, but it is something. Some attempt at fusing Teats, Smithson, and WCW.

Truth: I am sure I was thinking about WCW and "This is just to say" in "Resolutions" (see previous post) when I introduced the idea of all poems being an apology or an excuse for a resolution that had been broken.

Truth: WCW was, in fact, Smithson's pediatrician. Weird, huh?

Pics above are from spiraljetty.org and cwru.edu. Forgive me, they were delicious and so cold:

FLIGHT PATH
Delta Airlines Flight 3865 from Salt Lake City to Boston

From DIA Center for the Arts’ website: “Robert Smithson's monumental earthwork Spiral Jetty (1970) is located on the Great Salt Lake in Utah. Using black basalt rocks and earth from the site, the artist created a coil 1500 feet long and 15 feet wide that stretches out counterclockwise into the translucent red water.”

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
—William Carlos Williams, This is Just to Say

Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold
—William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming

Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty
is reflecting back our flight path—
those careful rocks bathing
in winter water and crystal salt.

Depending on the snowfall
and the impact of last summer’s melt,
his work is high above the waterline
or sinking into blue. Depending on the snowfall,
our reflected flight is soaring,
or buried with the weight of rock
fragmented in a poor excuse for sea.

Robert Smithson died in a plane crash on July 20, 1973.

If you squint down at the Great Salt Lake
before February’s gone,
one can make out words
assembled in those spiral rocks. One can watch
a crystal forming.

Smithson’s pediatrician was William Carlos Williams,
who was especially greedy for plums
and lived in Paterson, New Jersey. Smithson
died in an airplane crash. I am falling half-asleep.

The words below are circling. There’s too many people
sleeping on this plane to die, especially
from the premonitions of WCW’s
most famous patient.

Williams was especially greedy
for blondes. He broke this plane
into three sharp sounds, skipping
off the water, rocks, and sky.

The captain began reciting his 8th grade Algebra homework.
His doctor diagnosed him with the mumps.

On the way-far side
of the Great Salt Lake
there’s a mound of rocks,
some water, the surface of the air
becoming shards of airplane glass.

I always dreamt of meeting you
on the cold steel of a doctor’s table.
The flat cold burning
at the fragile opening
at the exit of my gown.

There’s a mound of rocks
sinking in the Great Salt Lake.

There’s a great big mound of rocks down there,
resurrected from the dead.

There’s a great big mound of rocks down there
assembled into triadic lines;
a great big Spiral Jetty
setting in the great big
Great Salt Lake.

There’s a diagram below us.
A picture Smithson stole from Williams
that Williams stole from Yeats.

The stewardess is wearing perfume
that smells like the greedy drool of a poet
gobbling up his lover’s coldish plums—
rosy from the refrigerator slats.

We are a collection of stolen images. The airplane
steals the sky, greedily pushing blue and drooling
long white washes, visible to the ground.

Williams turning Smithson’s rocks, examining
their bruises. Turning and turning around their half-
naked forms, his words transcribed to notepads.

The airplane rising, reflected
back below us, but sinking
beneath the picture of our flight path
written out in stone.

Smithson turning Williams’ words
to rocks, the air and sky his muses.

A collection of words in rocks.
A collection of people in the airplane.

A collection of people reflecting under water.
A collection of people
staring at the sky
now staring at the ground.