The Wright brothers warped wings
to corner the wind. They built a seat
for racing, wrapped
their flight school with rules:
No drinking.
No swearing.
No flying on Sundays.
No females.
What man claims God does not allow women to fly?
Glenn Curtiss says he won’t teach women
either. But I know motors: my father gave me
the keys to the Cadillac when I was thirteen.
To keep me out of trouble, he said.
Last year I coaxed an Overland coast to coast.
On the door: THE CAR, THE GIRL, AND THE WIDE, WIDE, WORLD.
Yes, I’m a finishing-school girl,
Miss Blanche Stuart Scott of Rochester,
five foot one, dark red hair.
If I marry myself
to a rackety engine,
of course it will attract publicity.
I partner my plane in a ballroom of air.
Up where the landscape opens, I steer
without rutted roads to slow me.
Clouds nudge my feet as they shadow-slip
across lakes and farms two hundred yards below.