Mid-Air Mattress Poem by Michael Philips

When the mattress lofted upwards
in the inverse of a perfect dive,

an inmate buffeting against padded walls,
his underwater hair swaying.

I wished I could have seen
the lift-off from outside the car,
observed it arcing impossibly through daylight,
treading water above the helium freeway
like a goofy space odyssey monolith.

If it had a voice, it would have sung a song of liberation
from an operetta laced with devil’s intervals.

I was greedy for meaning,
for something consequential,
even Socratic
about a mattress
momentarily poised like a saucer

in its trajectory above fast cars
then dropping like boxing gloves against jaws
to its place among stories in the genre
of things falling off cars