The Greatest Airplane Poem by Robert Rorabeck

I have been to good airports
And seen in there many of her scars:
As she is flying away,
She is beautiful: so many words in poultices over
Her shoulders have taken shape,
And are renewing her as if in springtime:
She leaves her nest—she says amen:
There is a newness in her arcing virginity:
I don’t know—maybe she is a candle
Who flutters over a birthday cake meant to be
Eaten by the lips of another man:
Maybe she turns from him, and goes
Another way, with fireworks on her cheeks:
I cannot say if she lives in America anymore—
But she is finally outside of her tomb—
Trumpeting a holiday—with swans and flamingos
In her wake—
And soaring now in that aerie of burning cake,
She is a muse who goes her own way—
The ferris wheels on their knees blessing her—
The hearts of boys beating a peony just like the drums
Of pigeons underneath the greatest airplane they ever saw.