Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Aviation

Civil aircraft. Photo: ICAO

“Working Together to Ensure 
No Country is Left Behind”

(Theme of International Civil Aviation Day for 2015-2019)

International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Flag

“The desire to fly is an idea handed down to us by our ancestors who... looked enviously on the birds soaring freely through space... on the infinite highway of the air.” ― Wilbur Wright

“Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.” ― Leonardo da Vinci

“Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.” ― Henry David Thoreau

"Aviation, this young modern giant, exemplifies the possible relationship of women and the creations of science. Although women have not taken full advantage of its use and benefits, air travel is as available to them as to men."--Amelia Earhart

“Flying might not be all plain sailing, but the fun of it is worth the price.”― Amelia Earhart

Midweek Motif ~ Aviation

Today's motif may feel like a complete change of subject, 

but it can be as political or non-political as you make it.

7 December is International Civil Aviation Day. Interesting that it is the same day as the USA National Pearl Harbor Remembrance. Do the two uses of aviation~for war and for peace~balance each other out? 

I rarely fly.  I've been finding flying increasingly uncomfortable from airport security and wait time to take off, flight service and landing. But still, flying to a remote location for vacation is a privilege that carries romance as well as discomfort and danger.

Our Challenge: Compose a new poem from the point of view of someone looking out the window of a flying machine.

Laurie Anderson's "From the Air"

FLIGHT TO LIMBO

Related Poem Content Details

BY JOHN UPDIKE

(At What Used to Be Called Idlewild)

The line didn’t move, though there were not 

many people in it. In a half-hearted light 

the lone agent dealt patiently, noiselessly, endlessly 

with a large dazed family ranging 

from twin toddlers in strollers to an old lady 

in a bent wheelchair. Their baggage 

was all in cardboard boxes. The plane was delayed, 

the rumor went through the line. We shrugged, 

in our hopeless overcoats. Aviation 

had never seemed a very natural idea. 

. . . . 

(Read the rest HERE at the Poetry Foundation.)

excerpt from New York to San Fran

Related Poem Content Details

BY ALLEN GINSBERG

. . . . 

Once more wingtip lifting to the sun

& whine of dynamos in the

stunned ear,

and shafts of light on the page

in the airplane cabin — 

Once more the cities of cloud

advancing over New York — ­

Once more the houses parked like used

cars in myriad row lots — 

I plug in the Jetarama Theater

sterilized Earphones — ­

it’s wagner!

the ride of the valkyries!

We’re above the clouds! The

Sunlight flashes on a giant bay!

Earth is below! The horns of

Siegfried sound gigantic in my ear — 

The banks of silver clouds 
like mountain ranges

I spread my giant green map

on the air-table — 

The Hudson curved below to the

floor-drop of the World,

Mountain range after mountain range,

Thunder after thunder,

Cumulus above cumulus,

World after world reborn,

in the ears 

. . . . 

(Read the rest HERE at the Poetry Foundation.)

Courage 

BY Amelia Earhart

Courage is the price that Life exacts

     for granting peace.

The soul that knows it not

Knows no release from little things:

Knows not the livid loneliness of fear,

Nor mountain heights where bitter joy can hear

     The sound of wings.

How can life grant us boon of living, compensate

For dull gray ugliness and pregnant hate

Unless we dare

The soul's dominion? Each time we

make a choice, we pay

With courage to behold the resistless day,

And count it fair. 

Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community.  AND: please put a link to this prompt with your poem.  

(Next week Sumana's Midweek Motif will be Music. )

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Climate

“Pray don't talk to me about the weather, Mr. Worthing. Whenever people talk to me about the weather, I always feel quite certain that they mean something else.  
And that makes me quite nervous.” 
― Oscar Wilde

“Men argue. Nature acts.” ― Voltaire

“One of the biggest differences between humans and trees 

is simply that humans burn trees.” 
― M. Jackson, While Glaciers Slept: 

"Fortunately, the world’s governments are now fully convinced of the scientific evidence of climate change and the need to take urgent action. . . . "   (From WMO, where a number of countries have contributed videos of weather reports from the year 2050.)

***

“Much of the oxygen we breathe comes from plants that died long ago. We can give thanks to these ancestors of our present-pay foliage, but we can't give back to them. We can, however, give forward. . . . When tackling issues such as climate change, the stance of gratitude is a refreshing alternative to guilt or fear as a source of motivation.” 
― Joanna Macy & Chris Johnstone

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Midweek Motif ~ Climate

• World Meteorological Day is held annually on 23 March.
• The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) is the UN system's authoritative voice on the state and behavior of the Earth's atmosphere, its interaction with the oceans, the climate it produces and the resulting distribution of water resources



Member states of the World Meteorological Organization.

• Technically, climate is a set of weather statistics gathered over many years, a summary of tendencies in a region condensed from many spheres: atmosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere, lithosphere, and biosphere. 
• The science is too complex for me to understand.  It would take poets or novelists to explain it to me, just as they have been explaining the human and political climate to me for years―and the climate is changing.

Your challenge:  In a new poem, use climate or climate change as a thematic element.  As an added challenge―if you wish to accept it―use a specific situation to clarify a political or natural climate change in the past, present or future.

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February

BY MARGARET ATWOOD

Winter. Time to eat fat

and watch hockey. In the pewter mornings, the cat,   

a black fur sausage with yellow

Houdini eyes, jumps up on the bed and tries   

to get onto my head. It’s his

way of telling whether or not I’m dead.

If I’m not, he wants to be scratched; if I am   

He’ll think of something. He settles

on my chest, breathing his breath

of burped-up meat and musty sofas,

purring like a washboard. Some other tomcat,   

not yet a capon, has been spraying our front door,   

declaring war. It’s all about sex and territory,   

which are what will finish us off

. . . . 

(Read the rest HERE at The Poetry Foundaton)
Copyright © 1995 by Margaret Atwood. Source: Morning in the Burned House (1995)

Pura Vida

BY JOHN UPDIKE

(¡Pura vida! —Costa Rican phrase for "O.K." or "Great!")

Such heat! It brings the brain back to its basic blank.

Small, recurrent events become the daily news—

the white-nosed coati treading the cecropia's

bending thin branches like sidewalks in the sky,

the scarlet-rumped tanager flitting like a spark

in the tinder of dank green, the nodding palm leaves

perforated like Jacquard cards in a code of wormholes,

the black hawk skimming nothingness over and over.

What does the world's wide brimming mean, with hunger

the unstated secret, dying the proximate reality?

. . . . 

(Read the rest Here at The Poetry Foundation.)

UN Climate Summit Poem "Dear Matafele Peinem"

by Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner

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Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community.

                               (Next week Susan's Midweek will be ~ Ninety / The Nineties)