May

I hear an airplane
finding its way
through the dark,
wings moving air
and reshaping sky.
The engine hums
like the nasal buzz
of a woodcock
on the singing ground
just before
it spirals skyward
and zigzags back down.

Jeffrey Johannes, Port Edwards, WI won the 2012 Hal Grutzmacher poetry award, and co-edited the 2012 Wisconsin Poets’ Calendar and the Winter 2019 Bramble with his wife Joan. He has been widely published in journals and anthologies including Modern Haiku, Rosebud, and Nimrod.