Somewhere in the middle of the Pacific, 
as two Pan Am pilots exchange a stare, 
the Diamond T gains altitude, 
its wheels and engine turning slowly. 
I’m breathing deep in filmy silence, 
the octopus comfortable beside me. 

Turtle on the hood blinks and turns its head 
as the blue ocean drops away. 
Now wreathed in banks of cumulus, 
under this slow and steady breathing, 
the Diamond T begins to shimmer. 
Already into the ionosphere I see 
the whole sky turning from blue 
to astronauts’ purple-black. 
We soar and lift ever higher. 
I sense the thrum of alpha-wave propulsion 
and see the magnetosphere! 
a great bowl of vibrating light! 

that bulges toward the sun, 
shimmering and buffeting 
in the turbulent solar winds 
sheathing earth’s entire magnetic field 
and streaming far out on the nightside— 
the dark side—all alive with auroral storms 
spiralling in at the poles! 
The whole wide sky is aflame with charged 
protons and electrons blown off the sun and 
curving in hazes of purples and reds.

Drive straight on into the sun! into white-hot helium void,
Scramble the eggs of my paltry mind’s eyes 
with the incineration of the kingdoms of distinctions.
Release us! Gate! Gate! Open the sun-hinged gate! 
Turtle turns and speaks:

All right, I’m breaking 
a silence of thirty million years! 
Enough of these fantastic conceits. 
You’re sold out to sensation, 
financed by and mortgaged to riders and attachments. 
You need a Virgil to your wannabe Danté, dude! 
Let’s go sliding down the dayside stream as it spirals in 
to fluoresce in arcs and rays and curling ionic waves 
that entertain research rockets
and falsify early-warning radar. 
I’m taking you right through the pole to the earth’s core 
and then some for a few object-lessons. 

No way to think about this rebuke—now we’re 
curving down toward the north pole’s auroral oval.
The hood and the headlights 
are glowing incandescent.
Turtle’s eyes are bright white points! 
The filmy veil 
we trail is a shining rippling rainbow.
 

Copyright 2000, R. Virgil Ellis.