SKYHARBOR — Summary

Mary F. C. PrattSad

Outside the North Rim Lodge where the telephones connect, people strolled by with their water bottles and maps. They bought coffee and called to their children. A man in tight jeans and beads played a guitar and sang off key.

I sat on the curb and talked to the people back home in Vermont: my sister, my brother, the doctor in the ER. To my mother one last time.

The canyon eroded behind me while my husband cancelled the train and called Southwest.

I sat on my pack on the pavement, while he returned the rental car. Through the gray noise, exhaust, confusion of taxi and talk, one pigeon bobbed, tipped between luggages and wheels, one pink foot in front of the other, picking scraps and crumbs.

Sun rise over the Grand Canyon. The arch of Angel’s Window. A troubled sense of immensity. The colors of Vishnu’s Temple. The green thread of river a mile below my boots. Pines touched and healed by fire. The scent of sagebrush. Hopi Radio news.

I watched the little pigeon dodge the river of traffic, stepping and pecking, until she flew away.

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The speaker is stuck in the ordinary chaos of leaving. Outside a lodge at the Grand Canyon's North Rim, she sits on a curb making phone calls home to Vermont, including one to her mother "one last time." The poem never says why, but the line, along with the mention of an ER doctor, suggests a family emergency pulling her away from the trip. Her husband handles the practical business of cancelling the train, returning the car, and rebooking flights.

Around her is noise and bustle, while the canyon sits behind her, almost ignored. Then the poem shifts into a list of sensory fragments: sunrise, pines, sagebrush, a river far below. They read like memories she is gathering before they slip away. Meanwhile her attention settles on a single pigeon dodging traffic. The speaker's mood is numb, tired, and quietly tender. Watching the small bird gives her something simple to hold onto until it flies off.

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Poem analysisA close reading of its images and form

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