Driftless

They have discovered
the wreck of Amelia Earhart’s Electra,
and this time they mean it.
Twin engines and twin rudders,
fuzzy sonar image. Don’t you find merit
in the barely visible? Or the face
of necessary skepticism in a world
often confused with an oyster?

Wind scrawls its signature across
my forehead. It tips my hat
to passing cars; it blesses all of us
with dead branches, in songs
hummed after midnight, the joy
of rain and sliced cucumbers. 

Birds may legitimately ask
whatever happened to our wings.