The ticket settles on my desk: a paper tongue <br />pronouncing "Go away;" a flattened seed <br />from which a thousand-mile leap through the air can grow. <br /> <br />It's pure potential: a vacation-to-be <br />the way an apple is a pie-to-be, <br />a bullet is a death-to-be. Or is the future <br /> <br />pressed into it inalterably—woven between <br />the slick fibers like secret threads <br />from the U.S. Treasury? Is my flight number <br /> <br />already flashing as cameras grind and the newly- <br />bereaved moan? Or does it gleam under Arrivals, <br />digits turned innocuous as those that didn't <br /> <br />win the raffle for a new Ford truck? <br />If, somewhere, I'm en route now, am I <br />praying the winged ballpoint I'm strapped into <br /> <br />will write on Denver's runway, "Safe and Sound"? <br />Was my pocket picked in Burbank, <br />and I've just noticed at thirty thousand feet? <br /> <br />Am I smiling, watching the clouds' icefields <br />melt to smoky wisps, revealing lakes <br />like Chinese dragons embroidered in blue below? <br /> <br />Lifting my ticket, do I hold a bon voyage, <br />or boiling jet streams, roaring thunderstorms, <br />the plane bounced like a boat on cast iron seas, <br /> <br />then the lightning flash, the dizzy plunge, <br />perfectly aware (amid the shrieks and prayers) <br />that, live or die, I won't survive the fall?<br /><br />Charles Harper Webb<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/reservations-confirmed/
