Jeffrey Alfier NAUTICAL TWILIGHT

Nautical Twilight
For Captain Ron Arad, MIA (1986)

Insolent fate explodes beneath your wing,
and the F-4 buckles under the weight
of a stumbling howl of valediction.
In mindless seconds the seat separates —
you fall to litanies of survival.

A sextant broken in the sand, starlight
slips you between the mirror and the drum.
Like Palinurus, you tire of myths
of favorable winds, but keep the helm
though thieves may drag you to coasts of shadows.

Jeffrey Alfier lives in Tucson, Arizona. He has served as an adjunct faculty member with City Colleges of Chicago - European Division, is a member of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. Publication credits include The Columbia Review, Conspire, CrossConnect, Melic Review, Niederngasse, Stolen Island Review, and War, Literature and the Arts - An International Journal of the Humanities. His poetry and commentaries will also appear in an anthology to be published by McGraw-Hill (October, 2001).
E-mail: exile3@hotmail.com

Back to Poetry Page
[Back to top]