Airplanes

Sitting in my backyard, I wonder
Why we believe planes
Fly overhead. I can hear them.
But my agnostic eyes see nothing.

Maybe they only exist in our trepidation
Alive, in the fear that tony suburbs
Are still too close to
The city’s covetous poor.

Our response is to hope
In things unseen,
In endless progress,
In predictable, regular, mechanical functioning.

The average man never questions
That planes move the air around him
Though he can’t see them working
Nor comprehend their divine anatomy.

I have never been the average man
And I believe in things far bigger than planes.