From the ascending jet
the cities recede
like a wilderness
of expanding constellations
like the heroic past.
If engines falter
what to fall back on
what underlies us
but universal darkness
pocked with fleeing stars?
We do most fear to fall
into no thing
but falling.
They have blown out
even the flaming sun
by which God candled
this egg shaped earth
saw in its molten yolk
a stir of feathers
set it warm to brood
nested in orbit.
From this dark egg
we all have hatched
we Icarus, at moth
to a doomed star
now free-fall
out of time.