Intercontinental (To JFK)

Having fallen so far so very slowly

demonstrating a type of patience only suicides have,

a sacramental, steady, plodding fall, but also

an aerating whoosh like no other—

without precedent, the floor by floor descent—

at bottom, do I find a bed?   I do not. 

Coming too close to you, I’ve cultured desires

to dive and found for them no home. 

I’m falling toward your desert cities—yes,

sometimes I don’t ask how empty it is,

if the cabin injects its electroluminescence

while I, as passenger, swoon from airplane window

seat to continent of cloud.  I find trampolines,

the cotton candy, will o’ wispy mountains and mesas

of you predictably disperse all the while

I’m falling, to not even fog, to vapor of less

specificity.  I’m inside this rippling machine. 

This rippling machine’s my chiffon scarf

and I its Isadora.

“Intercontinental (To JFK)” first appeared First published (as “Dive”) in Denver Quarterly, Vol. 37; Number 4 (2003).