Exercise
Open the exercise and listen as your teacher reads the poem aloud.
Landing Pattern
by Philip Appleman
We give them our lives
in the fog, the men with voices
out of Midwestern computers;
arms like kites, we touch
the sinister ice on the wings, our heads
always up there, forward, brains
in the cockpit, wired
to the banks of instruments, blinking
indicators, what has gone wrong
with our lives, the red lights
chattering, what is it slipping
out of our beautiful blood,
out of the ache in our marrow,
tugging us all the way home
to treetops, houses, dogs
in friendly gardens, the homely love
of grass: squeezing our eyes to feel
the solid-state components, rock
and soil, magnetic iron
moving through our veins,
mothering elements pulling
flesh to ashes:
the gentle thump,
and they’ve done it again, the voices
out of Midwestern
computers, brought us in
to the promises of runways,
one more perfect landing
in our beautiful blood.
{from Good Poems Edited by Garrison Keillor pg. 166}