Bombing the City

Some nights it was leaflets,
others, incendiaries;

the citizens of the City
waited patiently

for our issue. When
our parachutes fluttered

pilotless to the ground,
the people gathered

the silk to make stockings;
when duds stuck

in the plazas like darts,
they gathered them

to prop up their chairs.
I was a bombardier;

I looked down the sight
as if into the text

of a page. Later,
beneath the canopy

of some distant truce,
we dropped pallets

of food (some landed
through skylights,

on kiosks, on dogs—).
And once, when

we opened the bays,
all that came forth

was a silent billow
of snow; it fell emptily

through the dark. I imagined
one flake landing

on the lens of somebody's
glasses—a fleck

on his world. The rest
they shoveled into banks

in the gutters. By noon
it was gone.

Copyright © 2010 Wayne Miller All rights reserved
from Subtropics
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission