The Lake Union UFOs
We are being surveilled,
so my wife feels,
by aircraft hovering at night
silently. She sees them
when she stirs at 3 a.m. -
well before dawn.
Brightly lit, no ordinary shape
of plane or helicopter,
sometimes one alone -
over Queen Anne Hill,
or nearer, over the Lake -
at most three, so far -
they prompt her to reach for
camera or cellphone, to snap
or - better - film the hovering,
the soaring, the sidling away.
When her camera flashes,
then they move, as if
acknowledging: we saw you,
we saw you seeing us,
we saw you trying to record us.
Mostly, she spares me this:
wakened at 3, I’m useless.
Maybe, I also think, my
scepticism gets in the way.
(When she sees clouds she snaps
for their animal shapes,
I’m always good for some
sour ‘fancy that!’)
But the other night,
I stirred, sat up, and saw
what she’s been seeing often,
perplexed by. Surveillance?
a woman at the window?
I watched impressed,
the big bright craft steady
then zooming, drawing
sceptic me into relationship,
wishing her filming would work
as the night sky cleared.
Did you get it? - big lights,
now tiny on her little screen.
The would-be movie
flickers and wavers,
the big craft of no certain
shape shifts and vanishes.
If it has work to do,
it’s city-wide, surely,
sky-wide, sky-high,
beyond and beyond.
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