Aero

Anne Haines

(for Rebecca Loudon)

She tells me that she loves the parts

of planes, the grease and muscle of them,

the wing flaps, engines, every smallest hinge. She loves

the bits of rubber that wear off wheels with every landing,

thick black streaks on runway.

She loves the cockpit window, glare of the horizon,

constellation of dials and gauges, all the stories

instruments tell. She loves the calibrated sky.

She loves the light above the clouds, how the atmosphere

intensifies, a killing icy blue. In that thinnest air

all her planes are still aloft

and she can live forever, flying, swears it.

Anne Haines’ first chapbook, Breach, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2008. Individual poems have appeared in literary journals including Barn Owl Review, Blackbird, Calyx, Field, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and Best of the Net 2007. She received the Agha Shahid Ali Scholarship in Poetry from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts and an Individual Artist Grant from the Indiana Arts Commission. Anne lives in Bloomington, Indiana, where she works as the Website Editor in the Indiana University Libraries.

Return