In the belly of a square crater—

No, a box canyon, with a road tracing into the river valley,

The clay cliff face at its back topped by a

Baseball diamond on the edge of the high variegated plain…

…A girl drops her pink pen ahead,

Looks over the back of her seat and pleads the viewer’s indulgence.

When the girly stylus is retrieved,

The sunken town is lost behind,

Two rivers, frozen mid-slither,

Like snakes in an open grave,

Intertwine, mating, pregnant with sediment.

Wooded islands divide their gray, watery marriage,

Switch-backing south,

They part whitely around a Lama-shaped island,

To join again to form a wide ribbon of sun-silvered blue.

Wider than the Ohio, the big river flows,

The viewer supposes,

Into the same continental drain,

Flowing awesome and unseen ahead.

-Waking up at 34,000 feet