The Lilt and Tilt of the Sky

Pleased with the lilt and lay of the land as the plane criss-crossed the continent from Caribou, Maine to Carmel-By-The-Sea, California, Jane re-read the novel about clones in the English countryside and noticed how this time she didn’t much care how things in the story concluded. Once she’d completed the book, with two or three sighs she sat erect putting pen to paper and wrote this in her journal as the plane trembled and shuddered in a sea of sudden turbulence: 

“A poem is a smudged mirror for strangers,

a stained glass window lit by a sun blossomed by anger, an orchestra of yearning for those who at all cost take the first detour around upwelling danger. A poem is a volcano who dazzles those kneeling like monks on a thin shimmering precipice gazing at the crater steaming madness. Poems can hold fierce knowing, rivers of lava underneath glowing, can soothe like a breeze from the imaginal East so attuned so tenderly blowing. This airplane carries us darkly towards a possible world of eruptions ferociously flaming our nights and also warm handfuls of invisible fingers extending gems that glimmer, showering us empty of grasping with unasked for emeralds of infinite blessings.”

With that, Jane tucks the notebook back 

into her forest green carryon bag and rips open the minuscule sack of pretzels the airlines generously provided. All turbulence calm for now.