At the Great Door of Morning. Robert Hedin

the R101 still lounges

      At its mooring mast,

      And the Akron and Macon

      Lie side by side in the shade,

      Their great dusty hulls

      Overgrown with weeds.

      And the Hindenburg

      Is not all smoke and ash,

      But floats peacefully,

      Barn swallows wheeling

      Through its shadow,

      Its huge ghostly outline

      Basking like some prize

      Melon in the morning sun.

      The Great Liners

      The age of the great liners is over now.

      Titanic, Britannic: they lie

      On the bottom like broken cathedrals.

      But imagine how beautiful they were:

      Gleaming star lobes, chandeliers,

      Staircases winding into blinding light.

      Five, six stories tall, they loomed

      Before us like bright cities.

       Andrea Doria, Lusitania:

      On the last day they will rise

      And take their place in the night sky.

      The dead will peer from their staterooms

      Into the stellar dark,

      And we who call ourselves survivors

      Will stare into the vast

      Stories of light,

      The earth made buoyant by their passing.

      Fliers

      Lindbergh, Dornier, Lilienthal. . .

      I pronounced each one

      and listened

      as they rose in formation off my tongue.

      Myron