From the Airplane
Eighty-Nine Teeth Loom Up from the White
By Karyna McGlynn

Different types—some canine, some molar
and recessed around the gums—
all stained with fruit, as though someone left
a carton of blueberries out in the yard.

As we gather speed behind us and rock back
on the wind’s lift, we press our heels
to the bank of air, bodies stiffen and relax,
stretch to sniff the updraft of flight.

We hold some feathered memory, pressed
to the plastic window, looking down past
the mountains and asking: will we ever fall
into those bowls of small high lake?

Where the trees are dark and old
and roiling down, sky cut perfect and violent
by the knotted fists of ice-soil thrust up,
now naked and steaming in their insolence.

Where it might be good to be sucked
from the cold sky and the metal husk
of our outer body and down without warning
to this little cup of blue.

Where we might never be found, where our teeth
might float up to the clouded surface one day,
stained with blueberries, to wink at the elk
who gather at the delicate edges to drink.

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