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

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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

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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 ~ Invisibility

“It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. 

The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.” 
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others.” 

― Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

“I don't know why people are so keen to put the details
of their private life in public; they forget 
that invisibility is a superpower.” 

― Banksy

“Through you we learn to be invisible, through you inaudible; 
and hence we can hold the enemy's fate in our hands.” 

― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

“ I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in a circus sideshow, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination- indeed, everything and anything except me.” 

― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

“The people stared through her as though she were invisible until she thought she was, and walked more easily then, just a cloud reflected in a stream.” 

― Louise Erdrich

Midweek Motif ~ Invisibility

(The motif you suggested.)

Your Challenge:    [             ] 

in a new poem, please.

Palladiums

by Carl Sandburg

IN the newspaper office—who are the spooks?
Who wears the mythic coat invisible?

Who pussyfoots from desk to desk
 with a speaking forefinger?
Who gumshoes amid the copy paper
 with a whispering thumb?

Speak softly—the sacred cows may hear.

Speak easy—the sacred cows must be fed.

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Excerpt from Ghazal: America the Beautiful


by Alicia Ostriker, 1937


Do you remember our earnestness our sincerity
in first grade when we learned to sing America


The Beautiful along with the Star-Spangled Banner
and say the Pledge of Allegiance to America


We put our hands over our first grade hearts
we felt proud to be citizens of America


I said One Nation Invisible until corrected
maybe I was right about America

School days school days dear old Golden Rule Days
when we learned how to behave in America

What to wear, how to smoke, how to despise our parents
who didn’t understand us or America


Only later learning the Banner and the Beautiful
live on opposite sides of the street in America

. . . . 
(Read the rest HERE. From Poems for After the Election by Poets.org.)
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Excerpt from All the Women Caught in Flaring Light


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BY MINNIE BRUCE PRATT





1 



Imagine a big room of women doing anything, 

playing cards, having a meeting, the rattle 

of paper or coffee cups or chairs pushed back, 

the loud and quiet murmur of their voices, 

women leaning their heads together. If we 

leaned in at the door and I said, Those women 

are mothers, you wouldn’t be surprised, except 

at me for pointing out the obvious fact. 



Women are mothers, aren’t they? So obvious. 



Say we walked around to 8th or 11th Street 

to drop in on a roomful of women, smiling, intense, 

playing pool, the green baize like moss. One 

lights another’s cigarette, oblique glance. 

Others dance by twos under twirling silver moons 

that rain light down in glittering drops. 

If I said in your ear, through metallic guitars, 

These women are mothers, you wouldn’t believe me, 

would you? Not really, not even if you had come 

to be one of the women in that room. You’d say: 

Well, maybe, one or two, a few. It’s what we say. 



Here, we hardly call our children’s names out loud. 

We’ve lost them once, or fear we may. We’re careful 

what we say. In the clanging silence, pain falls 

on our hearts, year in and out, like water cutting 

a groove in stone, seeking a channel, a way out, 

pain running like water through the glittering room. 





2 



I often think of a poem as a door that opens 

into a room where I want to go. But to go in 




here is to enter where my own suffering exists

. . . . 
(Read the rest HERE.)








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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 ~ Hyperbole ~ Stretch the Truth)