January 20, 2019
It is minus sixty C outside
when the headwind hits a hundred.
The whole plane shakes. I scrunch
inside an airline blanket,
catnapping across the North Atlantic.
I nibble on gnocchi and mild cheddar,
nurse a lukewarm ginger ale,
and study the seat-back screen
inches from my face. Call me 28J.
My world is a shuttered tube
encased in a rumble inside a dull roar
tracing the twilight arc toward home.
Old Blighty is hours behind.
Below, an unseen ocean. We track
northwest, laying a trail of carbon
over the top of the troposphere.
Screens flicker. 27G smiles
as a dinosaur eats an actor.
24E comforts her child.
29H reads a real book.
Outside my portal, the full wolf moon
burns through high crystal haze.
Some forty thousand feet below,
a blue-white coast slides by.
Strangers in Nuuk are watching
the sky. Back in Biggleswade,
my daughter and her Englishman
are braving the evening chill.
People I love live north now,
so I pray for the polar vortex –
may its circle be unbroken
and bottle up the Arctic air.
And I bless the Gulf Stream –
may it meander north forever
and carry the warmth of Georgia
to my new-forged family abroad.
