The day that Mt. St. Helens

gave your air a twist, seeding it,

marbling it, making it mildly ex-

plosive from your Canada to your

Salem, there came, to our Wisconsin,

a roving, dazzling rainfall

held by eighty-mile vertical winds

which simply blew a plane out of the air.

Think of those confident wings,

getting more of what they thought they wanted.

I saw them carry the pilot on a board

through mud and soybeans—

it was a film I saw in my own home

of the severed wings, the rescue

of the wounded by tractor,

the clean sheets on the black and blue

field. They were going to Nebraska’s

Lincoln, when they fell into a machine

that cuts a fuselage open like a can—

the Patrol calls it the Jaws of Life.

All in little figures on a screen—

boys in mud to their ankles held up

pristine plastic bags of plasma

and a kneeling man asked, “Where does

it hurt?” And then, in recognition,

“You don’t know?” I didn’t.

Then the film of the volcano came on

and I could see how much the mountain

was covered by smoke—the plume,

they called it, bringing to mind

the old question from childhood:

Which weighs more: a ton of feathers

or a ton of coal? You have ten seconds.