I

If people were meant to fly
God would have given us wings

Mom hates flying and saying goodbye

But if we were cursed in our creation,
grounded by gravity, this longing
wouldn’t follow us into our dreams.

You know the one
that starts innocently
in the back yard
or that empty field,
and you look up,
blinded for a moment,
lost in the glare,
and the sky grows.
Somehow it gets bigger
until looking down
you finally realize
you are a part of it.

Sometimes you have wings,
sometimes you float slowly,
like rising in an old elevator.
And sometimes we soar up
to better feel the fall.

II

At night the cities below
resemble white and yellow pins
in the black cushion of the earth
Random at first, in swarms
of nameless constellations
in the warped mirror of the sky
but soon white lines form
and in the dark descent
pilots are sewing by candlelight

And these glowing assemblies
too quickly are the artifice
of airports. Filling out forms
and waiting in winding, crawling lines
of stamps, badges and labyrinths.

Even my luggage struggles
to catch up. The sun rises
at awkward moments and sleep
comes slowly, in small spells,
like courage to a wallflower

III

Jet lag, a businessman breathes
into his coffee, is a lost soul
trying to find its body again

IV

And my mother’s words return
with a price tag, as I hit
cruising speed, my soul unraveling
like a ball of string rolling
across the empty sky
its faint vibrations fluttering
the wings of migrating birds.

As these chords are pulled taut
what sounds do they make
when plucked? What twangs
escape from the jet stream,
and which lingering chords
remind the survivors of beauty
within the eye of a hurricane?

It’s been said a note played high
enough becomes a beam of light,
but few know that it works in reverse
And so I unrolled myself
willingly to find you, here
on a lawn chair. All blankets
and hair, atop this mountain
with the airport below
spitting and swallowing
its metal insects as we wait
for the rays of sun to greet us
with the days first burst of song




dedicated to an ink-stained goddess