George Perreault

My Child Asks About Landing

You’ll see our plane get closer and closer
to the ground, and then the Lion will help
with two bounces and a roar with which
we can sing along, two bounces and then
a long feline growl, so we are ready when
Kahului spreads beneath us, the worrisome
clatter erased with our chant and rumble
as we laugh into Maui’s moist heaven,

a private joke we still reprise arriving
anywhere, Barcelona or Oakland – God,
how young we were – long before our faith
could rest on the small pebbles of calculus
the Lion was our rock – bounce, bounce, roar
I still tell myself sliding safely back home,
an impromptu balm for a child now my own
prayer of arrival, that touchstone, that abode.

George Perreault has been a visiting writer in Montana, New Mexico, and Utah.  His 4th collection, Bodark County, is comprised of voices of character living on the Llana Estacado in West Texas.