February 2016
I’ve been writing since I was eight, despite being told that I shouldn’t. Writing revealed too much. This is why I tell my students they should never be afraid to put the truth on the page. I’m a community college English professor, who alternately loves and despairs of her students. I’ve written lots of different things—newspaper columns, academic stuff, poems (including two chapbooks and a forthcoming full-length collection) and a couple of mystery novels, one of which will be published this spring by Barking Rain Press. At this very moment, my dog is sniffing through my trash for a draft of something to chew on. My website: www.laurelpeterson.com
The Blue Promise of Transportation
It's that moment when the airplane
vibrates the air above you,
roaring, grumbling, buzzing
in the crackling sky, and
it is the most beautiful
sound in the world.
Somewhere else is what it means.
The shift into the next.
The sun sets on another lost day,
the purr of Friday afternoon commuter traffic
muted beside the hollow howl of another plane.
You love the smell of diesel,
the heave into the limbo
of mid air, the burning,
vacant, abundant sky.
Sometimes, you go to the airport
just to watch.
Ponderous enchantresses,
they lift like miracles into nothing,
the smoke of the Genie’s lamp
that grants the wish.
-originally published in Spillway, 2004
©2016 Laurel Peterson