The Second Sunday of Lent: Time and Space

And God said to Abram: Get up and Go.

FLYING NORTH

I depart at dusk. Flying north,
The sunset’s an orange line dance to my left.
The skewed moon, a waxing quarter,
Tickles the toes of the horizon.
I am east of endings, flying north.

At what point does dusk devolve into darkness?
Perhaps we fell from grace in Portland, when I was made
To race the empty corridors at midnight
A full half mile to change planes.
Did I realize my limits then, my bruised nature,
My reliance on mechanical wings?

Again aloft, I sit in a silence of checkered shirts,
Of men leaving home in the still dark, their minds bright
With rivers and the prospect of morning coffee in the trees.
I feel their contentment. A catch rises in my throat.
I, too, am leaving. Content to be a fisher of men
And mistress of dogs I am flying north.

Sometime late or early, cruising the downdrafts of sleep
We cross the blue line from longitude
To the circumpolar view. The moon reappears.
And everything, for a moment, turns indigo, gloaming,
Flying north.

Anchorage ahead. A settlement of streetlights,
A place to anchor yourself, to come down,
To find your lineage in the hotel register.
But first, a belowness so open that no lights show.
Huge tidewater pools this close, the great pull of the northern sea,
Bright webbed footprints left by myths.
Bright like my tears, flying north.