Wild Flight: Walt McDonald First-Book Series

Soaring across extensive terrain, from the working world of Detroit to American suburbia and pop culture, from the European landscape of World War II to the current war in Iraq, Christine Rhein opens her personal world to the world at large. In poems that explore the historical, social, and scientific as well as the poignant and humorous, Rhein relishes life’s juxtapositions.

FROM THE BOOK

"Friday Night"

and we're not perched at some neon-lit Manhattan bar,
not dancing in the ballroom of the San Francisco Ritz

but mixing martinis in our Michigan kitchen,
a pot of potatoes on the stove, our twenty-year-old

Formica piled with newspapers, bills, sons' projects—
bean plants growing well beyond the experiment.

I think of all the variables affecting a marriage . . .
How lucky to sit at this counter, to watch you

lift the frosted glasses from the freezer, your hips
moving in rhythm as you bounce the deco shaker,

its jangle of gin and ice—and that drop of liqueur
you add, tinting the cocktails robin egg blue.