Contrails

The planes fly green today, their wings
washed with foamy antifreeze and salt crumbs
dissolved to a dish soap slick. From up here,

clouds look like waves of milk,
or jet skied snow, or white cotton candy stretched
round Mount Rainier’s superb surprise.

What is the Truth? I wish I could tell
where you are, Grandfather. These clouds
put me in mind of a gentle, pearlescent heaven,

soften thoughts of oblivion. When neurons
hush to silent, when the multiple pulsing
frequencies still, where goes the you

you once were? Did you fragment, leave
pieces in our memories like glowing stones?
Does any part of you hibernate in your body’s carapace?

Or did you move on—is there an on?—board the one-
way flight with no return? You
were a caricature of good, Dickensian in your extreme

angelic. You visited prisoners, cared for the poor.
Paid a stubborn granddaughter’s piano lessons,
paid to wire straight her chaos of teeth.

I don’t know about Truth, but I do know
you mapped new paths of inclusion,
ways to navigate this world’s chill

shell of blue, leaving us sublime
lines chalking the sky.

• Author Details

Dayna Patterson Contributor

Dayna Patterson is a consulting editor for Bellingham Review, poetry editor for Exponent II Magazine, and founding editor-in-chief of Psaltery & Lyre. She is a co-editor (with Tyler Chadwick and Martin Pulido) of Dove Song: Heavenly Mother in Mormon Poetry (Peculiar Pages Press 2018). Her poetry has appeared recently in Hotel Amerika, Sugar House Review, Western Humanities Review, and Zone 3, among others.

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