Who understands why an image or a memory pops into view again after being burined in there for a few years. That happened to me a couple days ago. I remembered a bus tour we took to the Northwest where we experienced an unpleasant scene. We had pulled into our motel in Kalispell, Montana and were preparing to get off the bus and go to our rooms. In front of us stood a few people, and one of the girls was sobbing uncontrollably on the shoulder of a bearded man who I later learned was her father. Word trickled through our group that some sort of plane accident had occurred. The next day a newspaper account explained it more fully. The girl's sister had been a passenger on that plane, and a flyover by another plane determined that all four passengers were dead. Tragic! Then, a few days later another news report added a turn to the story: two of the passengers were alive, and since they'd been given up for dead, they had to walk out for help by themselves, a happy ending for a couple families involved. That story made an impression on me and I wrote a poem about it, even though I took some poetic license with the facts.
The Crash
Headed north to Kalispell
I pass crows
picking and bickering
over this savory prize:
the ribcage of a road-killed cub.
Ignorant of an obvious portent,
I drive on to the Flathead.
Autumn surrounds me -
gold leaves of mountain ash and poplar
dance with evergreen needles of the fir.
Woods and rocks climb above the road
and beyond: wilderness
where the Forest Service spends
its energy and dispenses
self-proclaimed wisdom.
At my cabin, heavy sky shrouds
treetops and rare patches of blue
open, then flow closed in the fluid
clouds. A plane flies across
one opening in a clear instant.
A government plane, I think,
then all that remains of this fleet
moment is the drone of the prop
screwing through the heavy air.
I hesitate to hear its pitch change.
My ears know that sound of overload,
the loss of power when an engine
fights to gain altitude. Inevitable,
I await the impact of plane and trees,
then the eerie, immediate absence of sound.
