In honor of the 78th anniversary of Amelia Earhart's Round-the-World flight, I am
posting excerpts from my poem, Amelia Redux 1937-2012: A Pilot's Log. The poem
is an epic and a construct, following Earhart's course, and fusing past and present
times. It is dedicated to Amelia Earhart and her friend Margot DeCarie.

Amelia Redux 1937-2012:
A Pilot's Log

Miami Municipal Airport, Florida

I become
A secret agent for feelings
When the Pleiades rise
To signal summer
Circumference
Is my domain:
Breezy extremities
Of curved verdure
Punctuated by descent
I employ a trailing antenna
To capture ephemera,
Like a kite-tail accruing knots
For buoyancy
I jump 
Onto Electra's still wings,
Her alloy skin
Reflects my figure
And Floridian sky
I scan airfield,
Catch whiffs of lemon trees,
Rub wind-bourne grit from eye,
Vault into cockpit,
Touch my canopy of dials,
Regard equatorial transit
--Mobius--
Maps are swatches of sun
Against knees
Bo shouts "All clear!" for San Juan:
I start engines,
Observe props spin,
See wheel chocks
Tugged aside,
Taxi runway vertex,
Open throttles wide,
Scramble southeast to ether
"Miami" stenciled
On hangar rooftop,
Miniaturizes in haste
Electra rambles Biscayne Bay:
Barrier Islands edge lagoons
With feral mangrove brows
Dolphins breach salty swells,
Propel through beryl shallows
Solar glints on drink
Stir spectrums,
And oil sheen off straits 

Laura Stickney

photograph from Lockheed archive; Electra is the name of Amelia Earhart's airplane