A Poem From Richard Pflum

Richard Pflum is a native of and now lives on the eastside of Indianapolis. He has  taught  part  time, and  currently  runs a  long  term  poetry  interest group, Poetry Salon, and helps coordinate An Evening With The Muse (a reading series) through the Writers’ Center of Indiana.

This poem was previously published in the author’s chapbook The Haunted Refrigerator and Other Poems.

DESCENDING  FROM  TEN  THOUSAND  FEET  AT  SUNSET

The lucid glass sky and a separate world of clouds
extend at eye level to the edge of our seeing
and we appear to hardly move through the white
billowy fabric around us. Beneath the wing
a gray-green Petri dish brims with life as little pools
of quickened silver, mirror back the sun. And we
seem to sit on a solid platform, where the universe
barely hums, just rubs around us, the cumulus mountains
rising up, breaking apart while further above, through
watery blue, molted white feathers from some giant bird
(which has preceded us …miles high),
leaves a trail we might follow. 

Now the sun floats in its foam, then as it sinks,
colors change: peerless blue into amethyst, a winy
darkness glows on one side of the plane while on
the other is a fading pink incandescence. A little
below, our shadow floats between the fluff as
squares and rectangles show through, delineate
the veins of forebears …these crusts of roadway,
corn fields. While up and to the left, just moving
into sight, the rough husk of our gray city just now
begins to flicker with its own amber light.

The Indiana Humanities Council is posting poems on Think.Read.Talk. by Hoosier poets in celebration of National Poetry Month. Other Indiana celebrations include poetry readings at the Artsgarden (above the intersection of Illinois and Washington Streets, Indianapolis), performed each Monday at 12:15 p.m. For a schedule of events, click here.