Ode to a Plane

The carpenter’s plane glides through a sky of wood, no propeller but the knob, no tail but the tote, no landing gear but the mouth & the blade & no chance of flying but the flat steel frog.

The carpenter’s plane touches down & down. Chips curl in a wave that never stops breaking. No one ever really escapes; all planes are bound to the planet. The only route out leads farther in.

When the carpenter’s plane got to Japan it began to work in reverse: there’s always more power in the homeward pull. You go out hungry & come back digesting fragments light as air, dangerous with the scent of new surfaces.