Above Siberia
My plane, after three dull weeks of planning, packing,
Diverted north by an unforeseen typhoon,
Surprises me with this view of Siberian taiga!
Exhilarated, as in youth, by the unexpected --
Alaskan glaciers, the rippled Bering Strait --
I forget my bored obsession with Iraq,
Much as Lowell, in this book slipped from my lap,
Had also to escape America. Mariani 384
Ronna will break her fast in her Thailand wat monastery
As the black of night on this electronic map
Edges across my children back in Berkeley.
What is life? This unpredictable, this surprise
That liberates us, Hakkodate, Khabarovsk.
I'm seventy-four. Anything can happen.
From: Mosaic Orpheus, McGill-Queen's University Press, 2009.