STATE SECRET Poem by Ester Naomi Perquin

Oversized bird scrubbed clean by bristles thrusting
high up into the air and
hidden atop the cable, spare,
from which it must suspend this flight.

Concert of unidentified powers,
ruses of clandestine government.
Those girls with their cute skirts and hats?
Silence on board. Or else face the music.

Once aloft, the pressure is so low
all sense - how clumsy, how heavy,
how slow - of gravity is lost.
What is unknown won't fall.

But who will pay the men whose job it is to pull
the clouds past the wings?
Who will wash their sky-blue overalls?