The Sand Hill Review               http://www.sandhillreview.org 2007

Delay in Departure

After the captain’s apology at thirty-eight thousand feet

the thought occurs at your window seat

that heaven may well be

the cloud-bottomed plain portrayed in movies,

the future a limitless horizon

of random wisps;

how else, you wonder, could you see so clearly

how the rest of your day will unfold,

where else, if not here,

among the invisibles, could you foresee after only

twenty minutes into the air, and two

and a half hours to go,

how the connection in Dallas will now be missed,

the rendezvous with your wife

again postponed,

how instead the night will be spent at an at airport pub

listening to a shoe salesman

named Bert

recount the verity of wingtips, the pathos of peau de soie,

until after his third martini when he will turn

and tell you how lucky you are

that when you leave there, when the fates allow,

you will, at least, have someone

you love to go to,

and how on your second beer, the nachos behind you,

and the days’ scores running across

the monitor overhead,

you will know that, yes, on that one truth, even

the angels themselves, given time,

would eventually agree.

George Lober