The skydiver sits with legs dangling
over some hazy sepia city, where white boulders
are really single-family houses.
The words in the sky-
The only open space-
mention the management of
Trust and Risk.
From the profile
I recognize the Roman nose and swollen lower jaw,
puffed up bottom lip.
The head is tucked in a leather helmet or bonnet
and thick black gloves meant for big jobs such as
holding on. The figure is slumped over, looks down.
I note how long it has been yet despite the gap
easily identified as the Pioneer Amelia Earhart;
whose good fortune in men and time
required no planning of retirement,
whose fate turned ill at forty-one,
whose security was not welded to stocks or
bonded to breed,
whose figure seems compatible
in that alien atmosphere,
who was never buried
whose sealed lips, stony gaze,
Pause one to wonder what she sees
in the shadowtrees painted below,
does this sky have depth perception,
or recognize
the Miss Appropriation, the mixed media,
the teetering between jump and fall,
I tear out
the full page newspaper advertisement
and fold it back into a paper plane.
"You haven't seen a tree until you have seen its shadow from the sky."-Amelia Earhart
Amelia Mary Earhart was born on July 24th in 1897, she disappeared in her plane Electra and was declared dead on January 5th, 1939.
1st photo of Amelia and her husband George Putnam taken 1931, By International News Photos (eBay front back) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
2nd photo By San Diego Air & Space Museum Archives [No restrictions or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
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