about the laughing cornflower sky
honey wheat fields of dandelions
a red-tailed hawk soaring high.
Spraying ink in a billowing black cloud

like the octopus in the sea
a puff of ebony is my shroud.
Planting word seeds in the ground
where men have toiled and plowed,

Deep and dark as cherry wine
my pen, my airplane.
Flying off the page in every line.
Traveling over mountains

to deserts of sleeping lions.
Not a man can tell me where to land.
This is my life, my flight,
laboring birth with my right hand.