My UFOs

by Michael Sandler (August 2025)

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My UFOs
a new planet swims into his ken —Keats
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I almost believe in them
or want to, gazing upward
from a field among crickets
when a peculiar glow
transits the black serene
to blink with mystery.
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That blip above Orion
has to be a craft, it looks
intelligent—one of ours?
The streaking beneath Mars
a satellite or booster
or perhaps a shooting star—
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of course, there’s an explanation.
They want to avoid what?—
panic?—wild surmise?—
which hardly gives comfort as I
watch the next darting flicker
gainsay the pervasive dark.
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A fear when staring upward,
our frail thoughts confronting
the vast silence, wondering
if all will end with Nada,
a flash of comprehension,
a trace of a beyond us…
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Terrifying to imagine
we’re alone—no one apart
from this riven world of doubters,
mavens, would-be gods,
their certitude overwhelming
a mere watcher of the skies.
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Souvenir… que me veux-tu?
_________________—Verlaine
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Some episodes prove difficult to capture.
Only the traumas, thrills, seem to stand out.
Unconsciously a forest fades without feature—
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Vague branches of nonbeing, a recall ruptured,
Evaporated time we treat as nought;
No easy fix opens that past to capture.
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I’ve retained our first night in bed: its rapture
Resonates still, those fragrant blossoms caught.
Quarrels that followed equally sharp-featured.
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Unlike these bookends, an unfocused picture
Envelopes much between. Ellipsis dots
Mark the kids’ birthdays, first steps, summer adventures,
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Excused perhaps by all I’ve reaped—endeavors
Vacant as clear-cuts let me bring home a lot.
Equations not my gift, love’s gauzy factors
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Unsolved since your first Yes, a hopeful gesture—
X represents the constants I zero out.
Typical plight? We all let sproutings wither
Unseen—not logging them is just our nature?
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Vacation Cocktail
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—–Drink that gets its name from
—–the Tahitian word for “good”
—–—NY Times Crossword, 11/11/14
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I laze among plumeria and palm
after a dip, motionless like a feigning
gecko. A pool attendant shrouds me in
a terry robe, an angel trolleys in
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a chorus line of drinks, iced rum fandangoes
with matchstick parasols—says they’ll take me
to seventh heaven. I taste a fruited stasis,
the maita’i of a lethargy imbuing
a spreading haze…
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______Flesh softens, a papaya
ripens to ooze and septic odors rise
from a ditch where a great white egret pecks
at putrid pulp as if perfumed; it, too,
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evaporates. Maybe this is the point
of basking here, a rattan lounger gauzed
in thatched light and the surf’s white hiss, disquiet
emptying its insistence, letting go
a sip away…
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______I try to see it as good,
something to make us unafraid of death.

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