Sitting on this chilly plane I pray the babies will stop crying
and
I wish I had the energy to make up stories for the strangers all
around.A June flight got changed to
include a SEVEN hour layover
in Las Vegas. Ugh.
They chuckle at the videos they’re watching on their phones
or talk or doze. The engine drones,
my eyelids shut but not before a sudden thought astounds.
Is someone watching me instead
and making up a story that explains why I have left the ground?
Would I be the star, the heroine, the damsel in distress?
Whatever their imaginations be, I’ll bet they’d never guess
that I am sitting here wrapped up inside
the clothing of the dead,
which sounds a bit dramatic but is true.
Leaving Vegas, I am wrapped in Mama’s sweater
warm inside the heaviness that hung on cancer-ravaged
bony arms there at the end.
We’d never seen her thin although she said she was, in school.
The sweater isn’t stylish,
not my color, doesn’t match with what I am wearing but I thrill
to think that Mama,
like she did when I was young and sitting on her lap, still
wraps her arms around me now and then.
When my husband’s sister died,
the clothes she’d bought to keep up with whatever size
she was that month hung, waiting, in the closet
until Mom said take whatever. I’ll just give away the rest.
Her jeans caress me now,
a pair I never saw her wear or don’t remember
but they’re soft and stretch enough to cover my vacation sins.
In life, though family, we were never best of friends
but in her jeans now
I am grateful for the grace that taught us to at least pretend.
Leaving Vegas and the desert far behind
no money lost, no money won,
and if again I travel there it will be much too soon
which sounds a bit dramatic but is true.
(c) Ellen Gillette, 2023
Note: Riding on the airplane I jotted down a few notes, that turned eventually into a poem for my writing group, then changed a little more as I read it to them.
