By D.R. James
PROMPT — If only ...
Life has been a grand migration
to where you are today!
—well known wisdom
I didn’t know!
Otherwise,
when those raggedy squadrons
clamored overhead last evening—
three V’s disarrayed
like frayed arrow feathers,
their leaders insistent as clowns
with braying horns, honking
for plane geometry—
I would have taxied, sprinted,
lifted arthriticly
from water’s edge (granted
more dodo than goose,
my splayed toes just scuffing
the webbed crests of waves),
and elbowed my way
into a rhythmic wedge
to claim my slot
in that mindless rotation
toward the life-saving draft.
D. R. James' latest collection is Flip Requiem (Dos Madres, 2020) and his micro-chapbook All Her Jazz is free, fun, and printable-for-folding at the Origami Poems Project. Now in his umpteenth year of teaching at a small college, he lives and expressively writes in the woods near Saugatuck, Michigan.