A Day for Flying

I have already been doing a bit of flying ... around the house, that is ... trying to pick my way through the early morning fog that blurs my vision and sends my mind down a dozen different detours.

I've been trying to figure out today's "flight plan" ... check for e-mails ... find my list of things I intended to do yesterday ... all of this while watching the time ticking swiftly away.

And then, of course, there has been a problem with the computer. What kind of problem? I really don't know. It just wasn't working right ... at all.

If it's not the kind of thing which has levers and wheels, cogs that are supposed to mesh ... things I can look at and tell what's broken or not working right, I'm in trouble ... big trouble.

But isn't that always the way it is when you're in a hurry?

Well, for a few minutes at least, I'm putting hurry aside. I'm sitting calmly at the keyboard, serenely typing a few words which I hope will make their way into "Chosen Words." Not a worry in the world.

Like, yeah, sure.

Meanwhile, the poem:

A DAY FOR FLYING

Crisp autumn breeze sliding off
some unseen glacier, sun busy
burnishing the copper leaves,

as though trees were incapable
of doing it themselves, and not
a cloud in sight. A day made

for flying. Indeed, overhead
dozens of silent chalk marks
of planes drag themselves along,

blade marks slowly multiplying
on a blue rink, crisscrossing,
widening, turning into fluffy

cotton batting stretched along
the cold, these diaphanous
contrails abandoned in a flight

to somewhere, as though planes
of the world were gathering
on this day to make clouds,

being impatient for the regular
kind and for the needed rain,
the prodigal, dallying rain.
© 1997
(originally published in Potpourri)

Today's word: diaphanous