Singular Travel (on the eighteenth anniversary of the death of my mother Grace.)

how many times has she de-planed to no one,
stepped into a city where only others have families?

and it doesn’t ever get easy to travel alone.
simply put, it sucks to be no body’s honey.

a lone egret stands in a white lake of Wisconsin,
waits for her flock looks up to the sky.
it’s beautiful, this rare silence the patience,
five bluish hawks return in circles
of swerve, serrated wingtips
touch, merge on high.

she melts into midnight in a wild tangle of reeds
waits for her friends with eyes wide to the stars.

greeted and taunted at the mouth of the runway
by smiling embraces bold slow
kisses of strangers,
she turns inside peers deeply instead,
seeks holding and warmth
imagines far golden light

an ivory flock of birds soaring

faint shine
of binary stars.