These Days by Matthew Thorburn

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend September 23, 2014   These Days   Matthew Thorburn

The amazing thing is not that geese can get sucked into an Airbus engine and cause it to conk out or that a pilot can tell air traffic control, “There’s only one thing I can do,” then take a deep breath and do it—ditch in the Hudson with a buck and whine, then walk the aisle as the plane fills with water to make sure everyone’s gotten out— but that afterwards many who weren’t hurt in a lifelong way, only shaken, scratched, no doubt in shock, had nothing else to do, finally, except take a bus back to LaGuardia and catch another plane home. Amazing too how before long people stop talking about it, they move on and eventually need an extra beat to recognize that camera-shy pilot when he appears—retired now, somehow smaller now, no longer shy— as an air travel expert (“Sometimes carry-ons just shouldn’t be carried on”) on the nightly news and connect his name to what he did that day, probably— let’s face it—because no one died. Though most stories don’t end like that. In Shanxi Province, the BBC told me late last night when I should’ve been asleep instead of sitting in the dark, twenty-four workers— all men, they said, and some much older than I would’ve imagined— were trapped in a mile-deep mineshaft deemed too dangerous now for a rescue, though apparently it was safe enough to work in. Shovel clang and gravel rumble turned to echoing silence. Eventually the company execs sent down a slender silver robot with tank treads, tiny pincer hands, a camera for a face, but all it found—how long it looked, they didn’t say—was a single miner’s helmet, dented and dusty, its frail light still burning.            Copyright © 2014 by Matthew Thorburn. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “‘These Days’ is part of a book-length poem called The Trees The Way The Light that takes place over the course of a year, from one spring to the next, and is addressed to a child lost in a miscarriage. Trying to figure out how to grieve for someone I loved but never really knew, had never met or seen, I found myself thinking of other losses, other deaths, and the different ways we remember and forget. But I also thought about those who survive, who in the end have no choice but to go back and catch the next flight, and then I began to describe to my imagined daughter what life is like.”       —Matthew Thorburn   Matthew Thorburn is the author of This Time Tomorrow (The Waywiser Press, 2013). He works as the communications manager for an international law firm and lives in New York City. Most Recent Book by Thorburn   This Time Tomorrow (The Waywiser Press, 2013) "Flight 214" by Sally Bliumis-Dunn "That This" by Susan Howe "Eulogy" by Kevin Young Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038