Henry’s Elegy For A Little Girl Killed On The Concorde

The thirteen-year-old girl in McDonalds,
a mustard-covered, ketchup-stained petal
in an Ezra Pound haiku

broke off from the rosebush,
the thorns were Eiffel Towers,
her smile a carousel.

She’s eating her French fries in France,
Napoleon was not taller,
but he’s not ordering from exile,

she tells her mother something
just as her friend looks Henry’s way,
she sees this poem no doubt,

already littering the dream song,
cold Minnesota winters
miniscule in the burning Concorde.

We can’t all be staying in that hotel,
the sky a guillotine
hidden in the perfumed clouds.

Henry walked out on the wing,
the rivets were buttons on her blouse,
Henry’s smoldering shoes fit only him

or William Shatner’s monster
in that episode of Twilight Zone--- very few people
know that it was Rod Serling in that monster suit.