Paper Airplane

by John Paul Hammond ‘27

Perhaps, in one hand,

It could have been

A list

Perhaps a farmer

Could have tracked

His store of water,

Filling the snow-white plane

With b’s and q’s and numbers

From far-off Arabia,

Arranged as cascading waves

Rolling down a wintry

Hill.

Perhaps in one arm

It could have been

A notebook

Perhaps an anxious botanical student

Could have whelmed

This barren landscape

With the fragrant scent of

Flowers,

The numbering of branches

Upon a fruited tree,

Capturing the rising

And falling of jagged wheat,

As the crowd at a rave

He will never attend.

Perhaps it could have been

A poem

Perhaps some manic writer

Carving out inky rivulets

On the virgin plain,

Might dare to trace

The paths of phantasmal stars

Illumining the rolling valleys

Of darkness in the mind’s night

While sitting next to his

Cup of tepid and tasteless tea

In the chair his grandfather bought

Or perhaps it could have been

Crumpled up,

Discarded,

Wasting the excruciating sacrifice

Of the Tree who die

On its behalf.

Yet here it is

A paper airplane:

Made to fly in wild circuitous loops

Made to plumb

The very depths of gravity.