Sunday, February 19, 2023

Prose Poem: Lois M.Collins steps out of an airplane


 

The city never stops ticking.

Like a cheap clock.

People leap into their cars

to speed away to work.

To rush pell mell to all sorts

of services and meetings.

The trains and buses hurtle

along like mad creatures.

Then Lois M. Collins 

steps out of an airplane.

 

She is a writer who can stop time

from running away unscathed

and unrecorded.

By stepping out of an airplane.

After all, anybody can step IN

to an airplane; but how many

people, let alone scribes,

can step OUT of an airplane?

In midair.  

 

She does this with an 

anti-gravity pencil.

Given to her by 

Rudolph Binswanger.

The famous business 

columnist for the

Tooele Transcript-Bulletin.

 

It allows her to suspend the

laws of gravity.

As long as her heart is pure

and she uses active verbs.

 

Lois has written that when

viewed from midair

the city no longer seems

in a hurry.

Instead, everything slows down

to the speed of snowflakes 

calmly descending on a ledge

until they cause an avalanche. 

 

How sad that Lois has lost

her magic pencil . . . 

She left it at Trader Joe's

and a clerk used it 

to open a portal to Schenectady

to visit a cousin.

And never returned.

 

 Now Lois M. Collins

steps out of dollar stores.

In mid-sentence.

As she writes about shipwrecked

youth. And canned spinach.

Which gives us hope 

in a better mousetrap. 

 

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