The Poetry Stash: 12Mar2024

From 20,000 Feet by Heather McHugh

Today’s poem is “From 20,000 Feet” by Heather McHugh from the collection Hinge & Sign, Poems 1968 – 1993. The book is available for purchase here.

From 20,000 Feet by Heather McHugh

The cloud formation looks
like banks of rock from here,
though rock and cloud are thought

so opposite. Earth’s underlying nature
might be likeness—likeness
everywhere disguised

by wave-length, amplitude and frequency.
(If we got far enough away, could we
decipher the design?) From here

so much goes by
too fast or slow for sight.
(Is death a stretch of time in which

a life is just a flash?) Whatever
we may think, we only
think that we will lose. The foetus,

expert at attachment,
didn’t dream that
cramped canal would open

into sound and light and love—
it clung. It didn’t care. The future
looked like death to it, from there.

Prompts:

1.	Begin with “life is just…”
2.	Begin with “decipher…”
3.	This poem contains two parenthetical questions: “(If we got far enough away, could we / decipher the design?)” and “(Is death a stretch of time in which // a life is just a flash?)”.   Draft a poem that includes parenthetical statements.
4.	Draft a poem that includes scientific terminology For example: “wave-length, amplitude and frequency”.

5. Photo by Mart LMJ. Use this image as a writing prompt.

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