Skywriting

Like a pesky gnat waking me from a nap
to late afternoon’s softer light, a biplane’s
old-timey drone broke through my memory
barrier, a porous membrane in the brain.
Associations slipped free as from the wrists
of an acrobat who works high-wire without a net.

Aficionados of model planes tether
their balsa and canvas airframes to handsets,
letting a radius of threaded metal wire
pivot round the center where they turn
– earth-bound pilots spinning dizzily like
dancers who cannot fix a focal spot but
follow with their eyes the counterclockwise
paths their crafts inscribe in the hemisphere
of trajectories in which they are bound.

As with a wand, our cabled pilots scrawl
indecipherable script across the sky,
like children flashing sparklers who leave
in afterglow scribbles they alone can read,
firefly swerves and jots, the stuff of memory.