#230 Is the Plane Game

The sun is setting

The towering clouds in the west

Are on fire from within

Glowing orangely

Three airplanes

High above those clouds

Make their way in three different directions

Their contrails streaming behind them

Like white fire in the setting sunlight

And just like most other times I see such things

I think of her

And the little game she taught me

Those long years ago

She led me outside

Behind her house

To the train tracks

Brown and rusty on the sides

Weeds growing up through the white gravel

The black tarred wooden ties

Almost hidden in some places

We sat down on the seldom used rails

And had a cigarette

Discussing things that seemed deep at the time

Looking up

She noticed an airplane going by

A jetliner

So high the body was just a dot

With a white string of a contrail in it's wake

Making it’s slow way across our sky that day

She asked me where I thought it was going

And I thought literally

Trying to figure out what direction it was going

But she stopped me

Not like that

She said

Where do you wish it was going

Wish that you were on it

And why

I had to think

And I don’t remember what I said

Then she said where she’d wish it was going

How she’d wish she were on it

And why

But I don’t remember what she said either

The important thing is

That I still look up

I still see the airplanes going by

And I play the little game in my head

Thinking of her

The taste of our cheap cigarettes

How hard the steel rail was on my butt

And I tell myself where I wish the plane was going

And wish I was on it

And why