Jeanne Murray Walker
May 2004

Melting Pot


As the alarm shrilled through the twelve-seater,
as the pilot scrambled for his manual,
I wanted someone to stand up
and lead us in song,
or possibly a prayer

but we sat beneath our personal
          air nozzles, unable to shake
our useful habit of reserve.
Beside me a man read Newsweek.
A girl pulled out her barf bag

and I thought of sending my voice out
like a skater on a pond to say something
true and beautiful and daring,
how not a sparrow, maybe,
          falls without notice,

but our plane was yo-yoing
like a heart machine gone bonkers
graphing the steep W’s
of our collective fall
and my voice burrowed

for safety in my chest
as I turned, we all turned
                    to our captain, a simple boy in earphones
fighting to steer the little duck
paddling for its life

in a dark, anonymous sky
                    and I thought how odd,
that our names would appear
together in the papers,
like the cast of a musical,

we who each died alone, without ritual or touching.

Published in The Southern Review and
A Deed To the Light, University of Illinois Press.