Cargo
by T.R. Poulson
—confession of a UPS driver, with condolences to the families of the fourteen people who died when UPS Flight 2976 crashed In darkness, can joy be held like a child? A brown and gold-tailed plane crashes. Freight and boxes of crickets’ burn—in this unfurled ruin, why do I think of the insects first? Fate, a crashed brown and gold-tailed plane. Freight planes once carried passengers. Cabins were full of life. It’s easier to think of objects. Fate is a small word. Three pilots die in the rubble. This plane used to carry passengers. Now it’s full of cargo—paychecks and pets’ meals are flown in a small world. Eleven others die in the rubble, among them a three-year-old girl on the ground. My cargo, too, is paychecks. Pets’ meals flown Next Day in planes heavy with important things. I was once a three-year-old girl on a playground. Sometimes I chased corn snakes. Shunned swings. One day, in my heavy truckful of important things a box of crickets busted open. Their songs unfurled in overtime—corn snakes’ meals found wings. In darkness, I want to hold their joy like a child.
This poem is in response to UPS cargo plane involved in deadly crash had cracks in engine mount, investigators say, PBS News, Nov 20, 2025.
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Thank you so much for giving this poem a wonderful home among so many poems I admire :)
TR is rocking the pantoum form and at the same time conveying her thoughts in strong images. This is the kind of synergy that formal poems try to achieve, often with less success than TR has here. And the poem makes us remember the pilots, animals, people on the ground, and all victims of this disaster, instead of letting them slip silently into the past. This is a large part of what poetry is for, and this poem fulfills that purpose beautifully.