Flying into New York for the first time,
all those years ago, the plane gliding through
wisps of white cloud, waving and vanishing,
rose to meet us, rough knots of wind
jolting us one way, then another, as if God,
having failed to reach us through other means,
was again trying to get our attention.
Lightning broke like a crack in the glass,
the plastic curtain of the window falling shut,
while my anxious mind immediately began
to map out the details of our demise,
engines coughing and sputtering into silence,
the passengers behind us praying without reserve,
the strangely serene drop from 40,000 feet
to some abandoned field, your thin summer skirt
with its pattern of daisies blending into
the long, wet grass, the shapes of our bodies,
appearing to be running -- whether toward
each other or away -- imprinted into the earth.
But just as quickly, the darkness gave way
to sunlight, the clouds began to erase and rewrite
themselves, shapes of commas and ellipses
trailing off, above and below, the brief story of
our life together -- part comedy of errors,
part tragedy -- still being written, still in search
of an ending that would make sense.
