AND here i am again sit­ting in a seat in the sky
rocky, knocked against the seat­belt, think­ing how peaceful
and my three-and-a-half year old wait­ing at the gate,
think­ing not ready to go, not this time, as we glide down
and i see your match­box cars wend­ing through tiny towns
and i see the snake of a river close by and crawl­ing off afar
and i see the houses stretch to the hori­zon and beyond
and i see the curve of the earth from up here and it reminds me
of deserts and fest­ivals and playa dust. And in my mind,
there’s a poem being writ­ten, repeated, rehearsed,
because I have no paper and i’m sure that half of it
will be for­got­ten by the time we land, snatched by
the frenzy of life and ”mama! mama’. And as we get closer,
i see a little red match­box bus turn a corner and i could pick it up;
it’s smal­ler than my hand. This whole expanse of high density
intens­ity the result of some giant child’s obsess­ive determination.
We get closer still and there’s a match­box car out there somewhere
expand­ing in size until it will be big enough to enfold me again,
this whole toy town get­ting bigger, inex­or­able, until soon
this detach­ment, this role I have, observer, commentator,
will once more be swal­lowed by the rush of all the others,
mother, daugh­ter, part­ner, busi­ness owner and there will no longer
be time for poetry.