Perhaps Amelia
Earhart was never,
as is commonly supposed
lost to the skies. Perhaps the storm
that rose around her far over the
boiling-blue Pacific was just
the world speaking to her, perhaps its tossing of
her fragile vessel in those icy winds was
just her way of learning that she
did not always have to fly. I’d like to think
she came to ground somewhere
in something like one piece, that
morning found her walking
slow and erect and breathing
on some primordial beach, her slim feet
freed from those chunky aviator boots
feeling at last the rough sand,
the rounded, sun-warmed clicking pebbles
the tender body of this
naked earth.
A. du Toit
