Blue runway lights outline the paperclip pattern

the airplane trundles around, heavy wings

clumsy on the curves as if they’ll drop 

before the straight shot up.

Just for this moment, as wheels lift,

passengers feel a force more powerful than they are

pushing them all back against the seats, filling their ears

with pressure enough to pop--but then,

as the plane levels, illusion of control

returns with soft drinks, pretzel packets,

and the pilot’s upbeat voice estimating a time of arrival, 

pointing out Niagara Falls below.

 

Occupied with neck pillows, earphones, laptops,

and mean thoughts (the seatmate’s belly bulging over

the arm rest, someone’s jalapeno breath, stale air),

a man in a yellow sweatshirt scratching his red beard,

a bald father shushing two boys, a tightly ponytailed mother

fretting over her baby, grandparents, college students, suits,

and blanketed nappers, slightly wary about terrorists but really

worried about making their connections in Detroit,

trust in a pilot they’ve never seen, and whose voice could be

a recording.  No one read the caveat on the E-ticket:

Your destination may not be the one you planned.

 

Not everyone will connect in Detroit.

Some will be stuck in Minneapolis for days, and pay

for hotels they never slept in, job interviews lost,

missed family reunions, unmet soul mates.

Some will get trapped in jobs with salary cuts instead of raises.

Others will turn into parodies of their parents and fight

with the children they intended to love but do not understand,

or get mired in debt or alcohol or cancer, dropping down,

and down again,

with seconds to imagine the fringe of ocean

and the sunset in a flat red line.

 

 

first published in Hobo Camp Review

Forums: