Looking up while walking

his new,

ninety-five-pound, four-year-old

Chocolate Lab in the

desert, he saw

a plane flying low enough

under the clouds but

over Piestewa Peak into

Sky Harbor just

when he was thinking of using

a jet plane for a simile of the

blustery, windy, grey skies swooping 

down in the pre-winter

dust blow-up

over the desert.

And that’s just plain the way

it goes sometimes when verifiable reality

intrudes on imagistic poetry, just over

the rainbow, way

up high

with a really big 747 way

up in a dusty, desert sky,

a historical reality

he hadn’t

counted on for the authenticity

of his poetry.  And here, he

thought of it before

he saw it way up

high

in the sky.