Dynamic Scaling

Kay Ryan

There are only a few
knobs: size and speed
are two. Just turn down
a bird to big and slow
and you can learn
a lot. Of course the
empyrean is now goo
which means airplanes
are caught. You see
jellied crafts not
plying the sky.
The people inside
are wondering why.

Kay Ryan ’s The Best of It: New and Selected Poems won the Pulitzer Prize. She was U. S. Poet Laureate from 2008 to 2010, during which time she championed community colleges like the one in Marin County, California where she taught for over thirty years. She received a 2012 National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama.