Runaway Military Surveillance Blimp Drifts from Maryland to Pennsylvania
       

            The aerostat looks less like a balloon
than like a woman, her body's milky curves—
            she trails her mooring lines all afternoon.
Untethered, cutting loose, she feints and swerves.

            She's carried farther north, while on the ground
news cameras film her progress through the air,
            her seeming reluctance to be earthbound,
reclining on the breeze as if aware

            she's wanted, as if she feels the fervor of
the fighter jets that follow close behind.
                        Perhaps surveillance is a kind of love,
she thinks, the interest of an ardent mind.

            And when at last her cables snag the trees,
she's dragged, sinking from the clouds, beautiful,
            submissive as a woman on her knees,
whose power lies in acting dutiful.

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Copyright © 2017 Jehanne Dubrow All rights reserved
from Dots & Dashes
Southern Illinois University Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission