Effortlessly the buzzard strokes
           the midway air,
           each wingtip’s splayed feather
           darkly visible where,
above the concrete apron

and the parched earth
           splashed with poppies
           and those flowers known as
           the eyebrows of Zeus,
it tilts and rides the thermals,

above the runway’s game-board
           shapes of the geometer,
           cone and cylinder,
           dihedral, rhombus, delta,
whose skin-deep miracles of surface

sufficed for us to fly,
           as a blue-suited man
           puts his head in the mouth of an engine
           that has crossed an ocean,
turns away and pops a Pez in his mouth.