Flying at Night

When my students talk about flying at night,
they become poets of precision, arguing details:
instruments, flight plans, aerodynamics,
control towers, weather. They are fascinated by data
charting potential life-or-death decisions.
I listen and tell them I am already lost.

When I talk about flying at night,
I see furry wide-bodied hawkmoths in my garden:
hummingbird-size, though less aerobatic in design,
my night flyers silently skim the ground,
refueling their nocturnal squadrons midflight
between one yellow weed-blossom and the next.

Allene M. Parker