Bird Woman
        Betty Scott, pilot

The Wright brothers warped wings
to corner the wind. They built a seat
for racing, wrapped
their flight school with rules:

No drinking.
No swearing.
No flying on Sundays.
No females.

What man claims God does not allow women to fly?

Glenn Curtiss says he won't teach women,
either. But I know motors: my father gave me
the keys to the Cadillac when I was thirteen.

To keep me out of trouble, he said.

Last year I coaxed an Overland coast to coast.
On the door: The Car, The Girl, and The Wide, Wide World.

Yes, I'm a finishing-school girl,
Miss Blanche Stuart Scott of Rochester,
five foot one, dark red hair.
IfI marry myself
to a rackety engine,
of course, it will attract publicity.

I partner my plane in a ballroom of air.
Up where the landscape opens, I steer
without rutted roads to slow me.

Clouds nudge my feet as they shadow-slip
across lakes and farms two hundred yards below.

Tweet

Copyright © 2019 Dolores Hayden All rights reserved
from Exuberance
Red Hen Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission