The ticket settles on my desk: a paper tongue
pronouncing "Go away;" a flattened seed
from which a thousand-mile leap through the air can grow.
It's pure potential: a vacation-to-be
the way an apple is a pie-to-be,
a bullet is a death-to-be. Or is the future
pressed into it inalterably—woven between
the slick fibers like secret threads
from the U.S. Treasury? Is my flight number
already flashing as cameras grind and the newly-
bereaved moan? Or does it gleam under Arrivals,
digits turned innocuous as those that didn't
win the raffle for a new Ford truck?
If, somewhere, I'm en route now, am I
praying the winged ballpoint I'm strapped into
will write on Denver's runway, "Safe and Sound"?
Was my pocket picked in Burbank,
and I've just noticed at thirty thousand feet?
Am I smiling, watching the clouds' icefields
melt to smoky wisps, revealing lakes
like Chinese dragons embroidered in blue below?
Lifting my ticket, do I hold a bon voyage,
or boiling jet streams, roaring thunderstorms,
the plane bounced like a boat on cast iron seas,
then the lightning flash, the dizzy plunge,
perfectly aware (amid the shrieks and prayers)
that, live or die, I won't survive the fall?
An impressive, dramatic poem about flight in an aircraft. There are more questions than answers. Will the plane land safely? Subtle thoughts on 'a vacation-to be', and 'a pie-to-be. The way substances change.
The intricacies inherent in the modern life and unpredictable threats to life posed therein beautifully dipicted in this well deserving modern poem of the day.
Life and death! ! " The way an apple is a pie-to-be" ! Thanks for sharing this poem with us.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
Ticket comes for one way; No return opportunity; to the unknown destination maybe unimaginable high or dungeon! But in the realm of fallen on one won't survive! ! ! ! ! !