Bombing Run

The pilot’s nerves possessed
   good brakes, good clutch.
Yet flying over Afghanistan,
   he just wants to land.

Why detail maps to erase
   the destinations?
“Master mechanics,” drilled his sergeant,
   “and captain your will.”

To zoom above the clouds, his hands
   tick-tock through tests
and control lights, the horizon below
   like a knife’s lit edge.

“Lucky us,” drawled the Sarge, “those drones
   will put us soon
in a bunkered room to joy ride through
   a machine’s pee-hole.”

Homeward, just the stars—distant
   and various—reflect
something familiar, a self-portrait
   on night’s blackboard.

The horizon, how far it runs.
   I feel like glass being made.

All In

In the basement, mid-game, stunned by a good hand,
yet without savings to bet, my friend went all in
backed by debt, the first of many loans
leveraging walls into ghosts
without date for redemption.

More? He won. Mirror witnessed.
And though Bill never rigged deals, nor scammed
  the luckless
in tenements, some nights I saw him snake up the trellis
of a mansion, to kiss his two sons
and eye his wife in her sleep.

Abandoning the Debate

A spy of desire debates
this versus that, concludes
the talk with how a cloud untangles in the sky
and leaps through an open window
with a satchel of impossible,
then descends into a glen.
A boy follows him out.
The boy feels lighter. Walls flicker.
Lectures like leaves gust past doors.
Graph this flow:  guide

vista

questions

go—

© G. H. Mosson