Flight Path

The day before I flew I re-read your letters.

In parts incoherent, I saw your words as contrails

in a sky that disappeared to nothing.

Was I wrong, do you think, to hold the vellum to my face

as I checked in at the airport hotel ?

The diagonals of composition re-captured your scent.

It was a rare companionship, you and I,

in an otherwise solitary life. (I’m still beset by dreams;

your hungry ghost flitters here and there.)

We took flight together - left the others stranded.

‘Not many experience this aspect of life’ you said.

I fastened my seatbelt. I couldn’t disagree.

In the restaurant, alone, I watched the take-offs

and landings, filtered through the blurry prism

of a Tuesday night sky. I drank too much

(I knew you’d approve). Cutlery scraped against

fine bone china; the sound of jet engines caused me to flinch.

(The careless greed of death always hovered above us.)

In departures I ate breakfast –  diazepam on toast -

washed it all down with gin and bitters.

At my gate, I found myself reaching

beyond the pale blue dome toward an unseen

horizon - up, up, up, and up, forever surrounded

by absent cloud.