Window Seat at Sunset (DFW to ATL @ 17:30)
by John Wood

Sliding away to the right,
a vast dark plate of forest,
farmland, lakes, nothing but black
but where spiderwebbing light,
vines of street lamps lit at dusk,

terra constellations glow.

Fractured by ozone, rust blood
ruby cools into pale gold
then falls up blue to midnight
like the rim of a flaming
shot glass. We turn east. Nightfall.
The fiery edge of that
ebony disk, the glowing

tip of that swooping talon...
The rim of a metallic

ring, once gleaming, smears into
a dull gun-metal vapor.

We drift into nightmare mouth,

swallowed by a deep soot cloud,

and the last surviving light
blinks somber at the wingtip.

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