{"id":105153,"date":"2016-11-23T14:30:35","date_gmt":"2016-11-23T19:30:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=105153"},"modified":"2016-11-25T10:59:36","modified_gmt":"2016-11-25T15:59:36","slug":"motel-near-ohare-airport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/11\/23\/motel-near-ohare-airport\/","title":{"rendered":"At a Motel Near O\u2019Hare Airport"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a>

Photo: NARA, 1973<\/p><\/div>\n

Jane Kenyon\u2019s poem \u201cAt a Motel Near O\u2019Hare Airport\u201d appeared in our Winter 1975<\/a> issue.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

I sit by the window all morning
watching the planes make final approaches.
Each of them gathers and steadies itself
like a horse clearing a jump.<\/p>\n

I look up to see them pass,
so close I can see the rivets
on their bellies, and under their wings,
and at first I feel ashamed,
as if I had looked up a woman\u2019s skirt.<\/p>\n

How beautiful that one is,
slim-bodied and delicate
as a fox, poised and intent
on stealing a chicken
from a farmyard.<\/p>\n

And now a larger one, its
tail shaped like a whale\u2019s.
They call it sounding
when a whale dives,
and the tail comes out of the water
and flashes in the light
before going under<\/p>\n

Here comes a 747,
slower than the rest,
phenomenal; like some huge
basketball player
clearing space for himself
under the basket.<\/p>\n

How wonderful to be that big
and to fly through the air,
and to make so great a shadow
in the parking lot of a motel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jane Kenyon\u2019s poem \u201cAt a Motel Near O\u2019Hare Airport\u201d appeared in our Winter 1975 issue.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1109,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1188],"tags":[15225,370,938,25902,19076,18994,8607,7221,165,16598],"class_list":["post-105153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-from-the-archive","tag-airports","tag-back-issues","tag-chicago","tag-chicago-ohare-airport","tag-issue-64","tag-jane-kenyon","tag-planes","tag-poems","tag-poetry","tag-vintage-issues"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nPoem: \u201cAt a Motel Near O\u2019Hare Airport,\u201d by Jane Kenyon<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A poem from our Winter 1975 issue.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link 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