UFOs

by Bob Bradshaw

Collage: Bill Wolak

Roz, small business owner, swears
she was abducted.  She was sitting
on a hill smoking weed, when the moon,
hovering over her
was eclipsed by a disc of light.
A beam, with hundreds of insects
fluttering inside it, pulled her up
the way her father would lift her
by her shoulders as a small child.
Pale faces leaned over her, 
their heads huge, nodding,
like top heavy buds on stems.
The inside of the ship was a cloud
of humming light, a hive
of shadows moving around her.  
The tallest shadow curled a finger
around her pinkie, and they walked 
into the cloud, like father and daughter

crossing a park.  "A feeling of love
washed through me.  I awoke,"
she said, "sitting in the same
cross-legged position I had been in,
a Navajo blanket wrapped
over my shoulders."  

I asked, Did your friends say anything
about why you were there?
She shook her head. Nothing
about wanting to set up
an import/export business?
She squinted back,

insulted.  She wasn't lying
to promote her business.  How
could I question her ethics?
I stared at her t-shirts and mugs
stamped with the face of a kind alien,
his big eyes staring back 
like Bambi from a meadow.
Maybe I was wrong, but why did I have
an uneasy sense, that if she had connections,
I would soon be shanghaied,
a prisoner on a speeding ship
leaving the galaxy?