Dream

Autopilot on:

We ride naked in climate-controlled
seclusion. The car: the family
Domicile.

The load-bearing stress of threaded titanium.

A man dreams of dropping bombs
on France. From Spain.
An errant pilot erases
the center span over the Missouri,
from KC, MO
to KC, KC.

What will become of our climate-controlled dreams?

A body in motion
stays in motion. Newton
is dead. Bombs
are rays in this nuclear
age. Post-nuclear
age. And men no longer fly
in the sky.

You can't tell
your cells when to divide.
You can't tell them
how. A body divided against itself
will not stand. Electron micro-
scopes are quaint,
even hokey. Eternity-
still subdivided into ghettos
of the Now.

We come bearing gifts
to find the Messiah
already dead.

Things just disappear.
A plane is a child's plaything.
What will become of our child's
plaything?
What will become of our climate
control?

I ask my daughter,
“Where is your toy?”

She says, “Nowhere.”
And laughs.

Autopilot off