Flightpath By Jake Sanders
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“The very truth, and the nature of things, though repudiated and ordered into exile, sneaked in again through the back door, to be received by me under an unwonted guise.” - Johannes Kepler December 27, 1571 – November 15, 1630

When a plane courses overhead
I think of loss
a time gone by
a rush of wind’s seduction
of propellers' lust,
all vectors abandoned

This mention gets me wondering
Of who is in that plane
up there
Moving about all over the place
Stirring up the atmosphere
Her broken, cross-hatched
contrails
Of interruption.

Not a day goes by that I don’t look up
And see a plane and think of you

They come in off the ocean, banking
Turning north-by-northwest
Towards that strip of concrete
The locals call an airport

Remembering now,
how that made you laugh
Imaging the possibility
Such an invention

"Why just 93 years ago . . ."

If I don’t see a plane right away
I hear it coming
A sound arriving in soaring pitch

The averaging math estimates
310 miles per hour
2 minutes 30 secs, 12 miles
wheels touching down in 10-15 seconds

from here
over there
out of sight

In the passing, a
Displacement, a dis-
Course of
turbines aftermath
a backwash of calm
calculated,

some more math,
the speed of sound through air
1083 feet per second
a quarter mile every second

In warmer air, the speed of sound increases

seconds leave behind

a delay
, Doppler. *

A phantom rush of wake

the sky tells me, to husssssssssssssh

My neighbor complains
Its a nuisance, lowers property values . . .

To me it is reassuring the metaphor

Another plane lands
And people come and go
You and I both
Our own way on first class, stand-by

Different planes fly over
Some small, some big
Some low, some real low
So low I can see the writing on their bellies

If I were a terroristic sniper
I could pluck one or two from the sky
Before a government agency could
Trajectorize the bullet’s point of origin

“I did a guy in Laos from a thousand yards out with a rifle shot in high wind.
Maybe 8 or even ten guys in the world could’ve made that shot.” **

But that’s not where I am right now
I am in that happy zone you used to kid me about

- wait, here comes another plane

It’s not so much the actual plane and all those physics
Or even the people inside intrepid and traveling
And maybe its not you in the plane
But me in the plane

Conquering that fear of heights
Extreme heights
The fear of exposure
To knowledge
That we are just glowing blips
On a radar
And how we can just like that
Meet up for a cocktail
Is beyond me.


I am over that now
But when I see a plane
I write like this,

I could write a plane poem
Like the next plain guy
And it would never do any good


It is all so confusing

Instead I want to dwell
On our histories before the planes
All took off and landed
The couples hurrying off
To the hotel
To christen a safe flight

I’ve lived up there before
With all the metaphors for vice
pillow, extra blanket
A free drink
A pill
In flight film
With dreams attached

I still prefer the window view
Even at night
I’d look down
And see the lights, all the lights

The math and
Buzzing quartz

And think of you down there
All of you
Keeping the ground

Grounded.
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* In 1725 James Bradley discovered the aberration of stars, that is the stellar aberration. He found that the displacement, measured as an angle between the real and seeming direction of light rays from a star, is small and in the direction of the observer's motion. In addition he discovered that the aberration is the consequence of the finite speed of light and the transverse motion of the observer.

Johann Christian Andreas Doppler (November 29, 1803 – March 17, 1853) was an Austrian mathematician and physicist, most famous for the hypothesis of what is now known as the Doppler effect which is the apparent change in frequency and wavelength of a wave that is perceived by an observer moving relative to the source of the waves.

"Über das farbige Licht der Doppelsterne und einige andere Gestirne des Himmels - Versuch einer das Bradleysche Theorem als integrirenden Theil in sich schliessenden allgemeineren Theorie"

(English translation: On the coloured light of the binary refracted stars and other celestial bodies - Attempt of a more general theory including Bradley's theorem as an integral part)

The Doppler Effect: A change in the observed frequency of a wave, as of sound or light, occurring when the source and observer are in motion relative to each other, with the frequency increasing when the source and observer approach each other and decreasing when they move apart. The motion of the source causes a real shift in frequency of the wave, while the motion of the observer produces only an apparent shift in frequency.

** Quote from Lethal Weapon