June 14, 2022

while I watch “Top Gun” and my wife tries sleeping through her vertigo

a friend I’d dropped off earlier at the airport hotel writes to say her flight to Newark 
has been cancelled, and in the news there’s a heat wave in Colorado, and of course 
the fires are still raging in New Mexico, and in Eastern Ukraine, an 18-year-old 
stands in a red chiffon gown in the empty hallway of her bombed-out high school. 
My screen goes dizzy with fighter jets maneuvering through ersatz combat, and Amy’s
got her arm planked across her forehead, trying to ward off the next wave, and Janis is
stranded at the Bangor airport, and the meteorologists wiggle their hands over Denver,
and I can’t get my mind off Valeria in the rubble of Karkhiv, poised as a California poppy.
Outside, the season’s first lightning bugs play peek-a-boo in the branches of an apple tree,
flickering like stardust in the heavy night air.